Why are early season Status® applications planned to beat the dry season?
David Allison, an agronomist with Frontier Agriculture based in Worcestershire, is planning to recommend application of the plant biostimulant Status® on all his customers’ farms this year, following the crop health and yield benefits seen on winter cereals last season.
“In 2022 I used Status® on around 650 hectares of winter wheat, barley and oats, on light ground where I felt the crops might struggle for moisture,” he said. “It was a new product, so it was a look-see, applied at growth stage 30 immediately before we had that prolonged dry spell.”
Status® contains a combination of Pidolic acid and the patented, award winning MTU®, which work in combination to protect the plant from abiotic stress and speed up recovery once the stress has abated. Agronomists who used it in anticipation of the severe drought faced by growers from April to July last year have reported significant differences in treated crops compared with untreated.
“We applied Status® at 0.25 litres/hectare as per the label,” said Mr Allison. “It lasts up to six weeks and the crop achieved the same yield we would have expected in a normal year. When you compare that with the yield reduction of up to 2.5 t/ha caused by the drought on the untreated crops, it’s a significant return on investment for the grower.”
MTU® is a unique, patented molecule which increases the levels of photosynthetic pigments in Photosystem I and protects these pigments under abiotic stress. Pidolic acid increases nitrogen assimilation and prevents the build-up of toxic ammonium in stressed conditions.
Both biostimulants positively affect root growth and have consistently shown improvements in nutrient use efficiency, maintaining yield with lower fertiliser input.
Mr Allison plans to apply Status® on a wider area this spring, and on a broader range of crops. “I didn’t use it on sugar beet last year, but colleagues who did saw a huge difference in the crop. This year I’m going to include it at T0 for all my winter and spring cereals as well as on the sugar beet. I will follow it with Nutrino Pro at flag leaf as the cost of nitrogen is still so high. The difference these biostimulants make to crop resilience and nitrogen use efficiency means you can potentially use less nitrogen even in a dry year and still get the same yields. It is also worth noting that we have seen positive yield gains on farm and in trials where we did not reduce nitrogen rates.”
Nutrino Pro is a highly efficient controlled release foliar nitrogen which contains magnesium and sulphur as well as the complementary plant biostimulants Pidolic acid and R100 for improved nutrient use efficiency. When used in sequence with Status®, it has been shown to deliver increased yields even at 85% nitrogen input.
David Allison says plant biostimulants are a game changer in a dry year but is equally convinced of their importance in a normal year. “I think we’ve reached a yield plateau with varieties. Plant biostimulants like those in Status® and Nutrino Pro offer the next step in yield opportunities and will very quickly become a core part of any crop nutrition programme, regardless of what the weather is doing.”
