Give crops a kickstart this Spring with Status®
Yorkshire-based Alistair McKenzie, an agronomist with Frontier Agriculture, has given his cereals crops a kick start this year by applying Status® at T0 timing. Status®, which has recently achieved its CE Mark certification, is a pure plant biostimulant which protects the photosythetic apparatus during stressed conditions and promotes nitrogen assimilation to maintain yields.
He explains, “It’s been raining here since October, so the crops are water-logged, which has affected rooting. I’ve used Status® in stressed conditions for the last two seasons, one where it was very dry and the other where it was as wet as it has been this year, and in both cases have seen significant improvements in crop rooting and greening. This year I applied Status® across winter wheat, winter barley and spring barley and within a week or so you could see the difference. It’s like an Adrenalin shot for crops.”
This is Mr McKenzie’s third season using Status® and he says his farmer customers are seeing the benefits within a very short time. “Last year I had a spring barley crop on limestone brash which wasn’t doing very well at all, it was backward and yellow. After applying Status®, the farmer commented that it was like putting green paint across the field, the difference in greening was so quick.”
Status® is exclusive to IntraCrop and contains the patented biostimulant MTU® in combination with Pidolic acid. It underwent ten years of trials before being launched two years ago in the UK and Europe. As Mr McKenzie says, “Many biostimulant products don’t have the scientific evidence to back up their label claims. As part of gaining its CE Mark, evidence had to be provided that it would deliver what it was promising and, as such, it has been proven to improve resilience and nutrient use efficiency in broadacre crops, and quality traits in both broadacre and woody perennials. This means that with Status® you can show the customer exactly what will happen and offer lots of trials data to support the advice. The other thing about Status® is that it is an out and out biostimulant, with no added nutrition elements, so when you see a difference in greening you know it’s the biostimulant that’s working.”
Status® is applied at 0.2 – 0.25 litres per hectare and can be tank mixed with PGRs or fungicides. Alistair McKenzie says it’s very easy to use: “With just a quarter of a litre added to the tank, compared with ten or 20 litres of other products, Status® makes life very easy for the farmer. And it’s sensibly priced. I would recommend it to any farmer with crops that are stressed or backward, or perhaps in poor soil structure. Adding Status® at T0 helps rooting which in turn helps nutrient uptake and gets the plant going. This year that is going to be very important across most crops and most regions, I suspect.”
17th May 2024
