Over the past year, companies have come out of the woodwork to claim they have the next product that is going to save your crop from an abundance of stress coming its way.
THE PROBLEM?
Your crops deal with all kinds of DIFFERENT STRESSES throughout the season. From heat and cold stress, to moisture stress, and even herbicide stress, everything your crop endures will affect your final yield.
Are there products you can apply to mitigate stress? Absolutely, if they are used correctly. But they won’t completely save a crop from a stress event; they can only buy you time.
PRODUCTS LIKE MEGAGRO, CLIMATEKING, AND EVEN BOOST 10 can help crops more successfully navigate stressful conditions, allowing plants to use energy more efficiently and do more with less sunlight; or they just downright help crops by reinforcing natural defense mechanisms. These products all attack crop stresses differently, and it’s important to understand how to best integrate them into your application plan.
As farmers, the number one source of stress within our control is HERBICIDE STRESS, or what I call the “HERBICIDE TAX”.
I’ve talked about this in previous articles, but the general idea is that when you spray any herbicide on a plant, the process of metabolizing that herbicide takes critical energy away from growing leaves, roots, and determining maximum reproductive capabilities.
Naturally, I wouldn’t advocate skipping post-emerge herbicide applications, as competition from weeds has a far greater impact on a plant’s ability to thrive than the herbicide tax. However, we can absolutely minimize this tax by helping plants to process and metabolize the herbicide.
Regardless of what crop you’re raising, anytime you spray a BOOST 10 post-emerge application, that crop will need all the help it can get to minimize the stress of that application. MegaGro brings that to the equation.
As an AUXIN-DOMINANT PRODUCT, MegaGro gives the plant the boost of hormones it needs to speed up metabolization of herbicide.
Its active ingredient is salicylic acid, which helps trigger a natural defense mechanism within plants known as SYSTEMIC ACQUIRED RESISTANCE (SAR). SAR improves a plant’s natural ability to thicken plant cell walls and ramps up antioxidant systems, which allows the plant to respond more quickly to future stressors. Think about the SAR in a plant as a tornado siren for the crop. It signals when the plant is about to experience a big load of stress.
ClimateKing primes the plant so when the crop does experience weather-related stress, the SAR is already activated, allowing it to respond faster by upregulating and downregulating genes in a plant more efficiently. The plant will still use energy to combat the weather-related stress, but by making an application before a major heat wave or drought event, the plant is better prepared for it.
Many companies in the industry can make claims, but ClimateKing is one of the only products in the market actually registered and recognized by the EPA for mitigating abiotic losses.
This is important because applications of Boost 10 help plants with nitrogen assimilation and increase efficiency of sunlight capture during photosynthesis. In recent years, we’ve had issues with wildfire smoke and cloudy days during pollination. By applying Boost 10 during those critical times, we can help the plant be more efficient with how it produces and stores the energy it receives.
One of the best timings for Boost 10 has been in the GREEN-UP PHASE OF WINTER WHEAT. Why? Because we are helping jumpstart a plant that is coming out of dormancy.
When we help the plant photosynthesize, it uses less energy to grow and becomes more efficient. This is important if you have issues with cool summers or days that don’t provide a ton of sunlight. Boost 10 is a great insurance policy to help the plant be more efficient with photosynthesis until sunnier days come on the horizon.
AS I WRAP THINGS UP, I WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR — NO PRODUCT IN THE BIOLOGICAL SPACE WILL CURE YOUR CROP OF ALL THE STRESSES IT WILL ENDURE THROUGH THE SEASON.
But some of these products, if used correctly, can help minimize some of the stresses your crop will face. In particular, herbicide stress and heat stress are two that I believe we can help minimize for our crops. Don’t get distracted by all the claims you’re likely hearing in the market right now. The best thing you can do is to see how things work for yourself. Start by trying some of these products in a few fields and on a small scale on your own ground.