Sunflower Sprouting Seeds
A native of the Americas, sunflowers are now widely cultivated. A valuable source of vitamins and minerals, the seeds were ground and used as meal by Native Americans. Producing large sprouts that contain all the known vitamins (even B-complex and D) sunflower seeds have a sweet, nutty flavor and a crispy texture. Many consider sunflower sprouts to be the best tasting, most versatile sprouts available. They are great fresh, frozen, or cooked. Once grown only in dirt, hydroponically grown sprouts now command a premium price.
Purchasing Safety-Screened Sunflower Sprout Seeds
As a leading provider of sprout seeds, we can deliver on your orders for sunflower sprout seeds. If you have or are starting a sprouts growing business, ISS is your source for all your sprouting seed needs. Call (800) 277-7688 to get our latest sunflower sprout seeds pricing.
Sunflower Sprouting Seeds for Commercial Growers and Microgreen Operations
Ask a room full of growers which sprout tastes best and sunflower wins more often than anything else. It is nutty and faintly sweet, it has a crunch that holds up on a plate, and it photographs well, which matters more than it used to now that chefs and grocery merchandisers are choosing with their eyes.
Sunflower is native to the Americas and was ground into meal by Native Americans long before it became an oilseed crop. Today it is one of the few crops that works as a sprout, as a tray-grown shoot and as a premium restaurant garnish, so the same purchase can serve three different customers.
How it runs in a tray
Sunflower is a large seed, which changes how you handle it. Utah State University Extension’s microgreen trial numbers put sunflower at 48 grams per 1020 tray with a 12-hour presoak, three days covered and nine to ten days to harvest, grown around 72 degrees F with lights on eighteen hours a day. Penn State Extension makes the related point that big-seeded crops like sunflower and pea produce larger shoots and should be seeded at a lower density than brassicas, closer to two seeds per square inch than twelve.
Two things separate a good sunflower crop from a frustrating one, and both trace back to seed quality:
- Hull integrity. Sunflower needs to shed its hull cleanly as it lifts. Cracked or abraded seed either fails to release or carries the hull up into the canopy, and then someone on your crew is picking hulls out of a finished tray by hand.
- Even emergence. A large seed in a tight tray punishes uneven germination, because the tall shoots shade the slow ones and you harvest two crops at once. We screen lots for evenness, not just for a passing germination number.
Seed screened for food use
Sunflower sold for sprouting has to be handled as food from the start, and ours is. Every lot goes through ISS food safety screening and carries a lot number and germination figure we will share before you commit. If you are producing under FDA’s sprout requirements in 21 CFR part 112, Subpart M, we can supply the lot documentation your records need.
Where the margin is
Sunflower once grew almost exclusively in soil. Hydroponically grown sunflower shoots now command a premium, and they are cleaner to harvest and easier to sell into foodservice because there is no growing medium to explain. If you are moving sunflower from soil to a hydroponic system, or scaling a tray operation into something bigger, the wash and dewatering side is usually the bottleneck; our Wash System and Cyclone Centrifuge System exist for exactly that stage.
Ask for current lots
We ship sunflower sprouting seed to growers in dozens of countries, in quantities that fit a single tray trial or a full production week. Call (800) 277-7688 for current sunflower sprouting seed pricing and lot availability, or reach us through our contact form.
