Managing water stress with Status®
While drought remains the most familiar challenge, growers are now facing a more complex pattern of extremes: prolonged dry spells followed by intense rainfall and water stress. These rapid shifts place enormous pressure on crop metabolism, particularly on photosynthesis and nitrogen assimilation – two processes that are highly sensitive to both drought and water stress. Against this backdrop, biostimulants that stabilise plant metabolism under fluctuating stress conditions are becoming essential tools for maintaining crop performance.
Status® contains a unique single molecule biostimulant, MTU®, and pidolic acid, which together build resilience and prime crops for stress events. MTU® supports photosynthesis by increasing chlorophyll concentration, protecting the photosynthetic apparatus under stress and helping plants stay greener and more active for longer. Pidolic acid boosts nitrogen assimilation by stimulating the plant’s natural metabolism, encouraging the production of key amino acids like glutamic acid that are vital for growth and protein synthesis.
Growers all around the globe use and recommend Status® for drought and heat stress, where its ability to maintain ATP production and nitrogen metabolism is well understood. However, recent work has shown that the same physiological mechanisms also provide significant benefits under waterlogging- an increasingly common stress in the UK & Nort West Europe.
Under waterlogged conditions, nitrogen is lost specifically through denitrification, where bacteria convert nitrates into gas due to lack of oxygen. Other key nutrients are also lost via leaching. Prolonged waterlogging also restricts root development by limiting oxygen supply. Reduced rooting depth and density compromise the plant’s ability to access water and nutrients later in the season, increasing vulnerability to subsequent drought or heat stress. Waterlogging can disrupt soil pH balance, further reducing nutrient uptake. Status® improves nutrient use efficiency when nutrient availability in the soil is limited.
Waterlogged conditions reduce oxygen availability, suppress nitrogen assimilation and accelerate chlorophyll breakdown, creating exactly the type of metabolic bottlenecks that MTU® and pidolic acid are designed to relieve. As a result, Status is proving to be far more versatile than its original drought focused positioning.
During normal growth, plants generate ROS (Reactive oxygen species) which serve as signal transmitters for regulating the expression of proteins and genes in plant cells. The elimination and production of ROS are constantly balanced, maintaining an equilibrium. When a plant is under stress, its balance is disrupted, which results in the disruption of the physiological and biochemical mechanisms of the plant cell membrane and an increase in ROS production. In order to prevent cell damage, plants activate their antioxidant defence system in response to stress.
The ability of MTU® to mop up these ROS and generate more ATP due to higher PSI efficiency, allows Status® to be beneficial during drought and water stress.
This was clearly demonstrated in a 2025 glasshouse trial where brassica plants were treated with MTU® before being subjected to poor drainage. The results showed that MTU® delivered the highest fresh weight under waterlogging, outperforming other treatments. The untreated control produced 185.5 g of fresh weight, while MTU® reached 256.7 g- an increase of 38%.
Status® was applied to water-logged cilantro in Spain in 2024. The positive benefit Status brings to water-logged crops was seen just 20 days after application.
These findings align perfectly with the known mode of action of Status®. By protecting chlorophyll, maintaining ATP production and stabilising nitrogen metabolism, the product supports the plant through both drought and waterlogging- two stresses that may appear opposite but ultimately disrupt the same core metabolic pathways. As growers face increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, the ability of Status® to deliver resilience across this full spectrum of environmental stress makes it a valuable addition to modern crop management strategies.
