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This Year’s Rich Cone Harvesting Season has Come to an End

For almost six months – from October until March – JSC “Latvia's State Forests” (LVM) employees have been actively collecting cones in LVM seed plantations. At the end of the rich cone season of 2019/2020, it is planned to harvest about 1900 hl of spruce cones.

The largest portion of cones – more than 1000 hl – were harvested in the Remte seed plantation, but the plantations in Sēme, Suntaži, Katvari and Liepa had a fairly good harvest as well. The first crops in the new plantations in Vecumi, Liuza and Šarlote are also remarkable.

“Spruce is particularly demanding of climatic factors: it takes hot and dry weather for the new shoots to form from May to the end of June. This situation was experienced in the spring of 2018, when even the ground burst from drought in May. Such climatic conditions stressed the spruce trees and caused the flower buds to grow. And this time the expectations came true – in the spring of 2019, spruces bloomed,” says Guntis Grandāns, Director of LVM Sēklas un stādi.

Seeds obtained from seed plantations have a high genetic potential – the future forest grown from them will be 18-20% more productive than if the seeds had been harvested from felled trees. In order to maintain the potential cone yield, protection measures for young cones are taken in spruce seed plantations. Spruce – bird-cherry tree rust is the most dangerous disease for cones, and it can completely destroy the potential crop. The cone protection measures implemented by the employees of LVM Sēklas un stādi yielded a result – a rich harvest of healthy cones in the autumn.

Cone collection is a relatively difficult task: all winter long, in almost any weather conditions, specially trained and equipped workers climb the tops of spruce trees and cut the productive part of the crown. Further work “on the ground” is already a little easier.

All cones are harvested: the healthy will travel to cone drying facilities in Renda or Kalsnava, whereas the sick and insect-damaged cones are burnt in the plantation to limit the further spread of diseases and pests.

1200 kg of the highest quality seeds

In cone drying facilities, the healthy cones will be dried, seeds will be collected and the mass of seeds obtained will be purified until the highest quality seeds are obtained.

One spruce cone contains from 200 to 250 seeds on average. 1000 seeds weigh from 6 to 7 grams. About 120 thousand spruce seedlings can be grown from one kg of seeds.

“More than 500 kg of spruce seeds have been prepared so far; however, the volume of cones harvested allows us to hope for a total of 1 200 kg of seeds. This amount provides Latvia with spruce seeds for three years – annual consumption is less than 400 kg,” says Guntis Grandāns.

The quality of the prepared seeds is determined in the forest seed laboratory of the Forest Research Station, then they receive a certificate of the State Forest Service and are stored in Kalsnava seed warehouse until sale.

The previous spruce seed harvest was yielded in the winter of 2017/2018, when 760 kg of seeds were obtained from 1000 hl of cones. Before that, there was a long period without harvest – eleven years. “In order to survive such periods, it is necessary to have a strategic seed reserve, which should provide spruces for at least 10 years – in the amount of four to five tonnes,” explains Guntis Grandāns, Director of LVM Sēklas un stādi.