Are we getting the most out of seed hybrids and our soils? It’s a continuing challenge for farmers and the companies that serve them.
One company, Sound Agriculture, is leveraging the biology in the plant and soil to unleash the natural power that exists in plants, allowing them to respond more quickly to changing climate and even consumer demands. Their newest product SOURCE™ is a microbiome activator that helps soil more efficiently make its nutrients available for plants.
Jeff Divan is a farmer and Director of Sales Agronomy for Sound Agriculture.
“Source leverages technology developed by Sound that actually signals into the microbiome, so what we’re doing is working with what’s already in the soil, the microbes that exist in that soil and we’re getting them to be more active for us,” he said. “So what that means is fixing atmospheric nitrogen on a corn crop or soybeans as well as solubilizing phosphate, so that phosphate that’s been tied up in the soil and is unavailable to plants. We’re putting those microbes to work to get that going. So really working with what’s already there in the soil and leveraging that to get more productivity out of it.”
Divan says SOURCE™ is different than other in-furrow products that target microbes in the soil. SOURCE™ is foliar applied chemistry that activates the entire biome, and there are application options for producers.
“A lot of times we think of microbes we often associate that with a planting application, so something that’s going in furrow,” Divan explained. “Source is very unique in that it’s a foliar applied product, so we are working on that microbiome and microbes in the soil through a foliar application. It also makes that product very easy to use, so we have a wide application window. We can go on with herbicide at V4 or we can go tank mix with a fungicide insecticide late in the season, R1 through R3. So we’ve got a lot of different options to put that product on and get activity within the soil. So that makes it very different. The other thing is that it’s not alive. It is a chemistry, so that makes it very shelf stable and you don’t have any storage or handling requirements.”
There is no risk to adding SOURCE™ to a herbicide tank mix. It targets different areas in the plant and goes along for the ride without lessening the effectiveness of your weed treatment plans.
For more information on Sound Agriculture and SOURCE™ visit their website: https://www.sound.ag/