At trade shows for farmers around the country this winter there was plenty of new equipment to look at, but one thing was consistently on the minds of growers from the Midwest.
“It’s pretty consistent that a lot of them are saying what do you have to help me deal with drought,” said Cathy Soanes. She is customer solutions manager at Novozymes BioAg and their best advice for farmers concerned about more drought or any other growing season issues is to ensure crops have a good root system.
“Once you plant that seed it’s up to Mother Nature as to where you get, so when you get that ear set and you have a fantastic spring and everything’s off to a good start and then you’re hit with a drought, that just takes away everything that you started in the spring. So anything you can do to enhance those roots gets them down farther where there’s more access to water and helps it deal with stress like drought.”
Novozymes has a series of products all designed to get plants off to a good start. JumpStart LCO, new this year, is a seed treatment registered for corn and wheat and has two technologies that go to work at planting.
“It has LCO Promoter technology which is a crop enhancement. It actually enhances root and shoot growth and so when it comes to dealing with stress mitigation in things like drought, good roots is going to help you. It also contains the penicillium bilaii technology which is a natural soil borne fungi. What it does is grow along the roots and release organic acids. They solubilize bound up phosphates so when you apply your phosphate fertilizer it often gets locked up in the soil and is not that mobile. What this does is release it into an ortho phosphate form which is available to the plant and it can uptake it.”
Phosphorus is one of the key nutrients enabling plant growth.
Novozymes also offers biofertility products for soybean growers.