Effect of Swathing or Direct Combining on Yield, Seed Losses and Costs of Camelina

Abstract

Camelina is an interesting crop and producers must adopt cultural practices to achieve the highest yield and oil content possible. Considering the size of the seed, the harvesting phase is crucial to reduce losses and maximize income. Furthermore, in recent years, with the worsening of climatic conditions due to global warming, crop management can no longer follow the classic seasonality but must adapt to new climatic conditions. The possibility of double cropping, that is the process of producing two crops in a single season, allows multiple advantages such as weed control, greater remuneration, and less exposure to bare soil which determine greater resilience of the production system. To enable this, especially in recent years, even a few days of difference in the cultivation phases can guarantee the success of double cropping. For these reasons, the authors compared two different harvesting strategies: direct combining at full maturity (DC); swathing + combining at full maturity (SW). The working performance, cost, and seed losses associated with each harvesting method were calculated. The results highlighted how SW reduced the crop cycle length by 11 days, did not influence seed losses and crop yield but showed lower performance and higher cost with respect to DC.