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See the latest news, innovation updates, trial results, grower stories and more from Agricen. 
[Interview] Employing Sustainable Technologies to Enhance Yield
May 4, 2023 — Posted By Agricen

Wity-radio-down on farmAgricen's Scott Lay recently spoke with Dennis Michelsen of WITY Radio about sustainable plant health technologies growers can employ this season to enhance yield and ROI. 

Dennis - WITY Radio: Agricen has a booklet about the company's sustainable plant health technologies. Tell us more about that. 

Scott - Agricen: Sustainable practices or technologies can be employed in real-life intensive managed production systems, and not at the expense of yield. They can enhance yield and productivity.

Our technologies, they either benefit the plant, benefit the soil, or both. If we can pair those technologies with traditional production practices, that’s a win-win.

Dennis - WITY Radio: One of the products you talk about is ACCOMPLISH MAX. Sometimes when we get a later planting, the crop doesn’t have a chance to get a good, deep root structure to get through those dry periods in the summer. ACCOMPLISH MAX could help avoid some of those stresses.

Scott - Agricen: Last year, ACCOMPLISH MAX is an in-furrow product used with starter fertilizers, with an average 7 to 8 bushel yield response in corn. If you can minimize early season stresses and enhance the amount of nutrients available to the plant, that plant has a better chance of yield.

Dennis - WITY Radio: EXTRACT PBA is about making sure you get all the benefit out of the nutrients you’re already putting down in your soil.

Scott - Agricen: There are hundreds of dollars’ worth of nutrients that every farmer in the US has already paid for, which are already in the soil profile or in the prior year’s residue. EXTRACT is a broadcast application designed to accelerate Mother Nature’s work in mineralizing those nutrients into a plant-available form.

Dennis - WITY Radio: Another product you have is TERRAMAR, which my listeners might not be as familiar with.

Scott - Agricen: Last year we had an informal introduction of TERRAMAR with tremendous results. It’s a foliar or post application timing for corn or soybean crops. While we can’t control temperature, precipitation or other environmental conditions, we know those environmental conditions have a tremendous impact on a crop's ability to yield. TERRAMAR minimizes heat and drought stress to preserve the yield potential that exists in that corn or soybean plant.

Dennis - WITY Radio:  And TERRAMAR can be combined with other products that you're already going to be making the pass in the field with.

Scott - Agricen: If we can embed our technology in applications that are already taking place so that farmers don’t have to alter what they are already doing, we’ve got a better likelihood of experiencing success.

ACCOMPLISH MAX, EXTRACT and TERRAMAR are available from Nutrien Ag Solutions.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the interview below or on Agricen's YouTube channel.

Download the Sustainable Plant Health Technology Overview to learn more about Accomplish MAX, Extract PBA and Terramar.

Download the Bulletin

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Congratulating the 2022 Corn & Soybean Yield Contest Winners
May 1, 2023 — Posted By Agricen

In the NCGA's 2022 National Corn Yield Contest, nearly three dozen winners used Agricen's biocatalyst technologies in their winning programs. They include four farmers who took top places at the national level and 31 who took top places in their states. 🏆

NCGA_social-2022 (1)

The winning growers used one or more of the following products in their corn fertility programs: Accomplish MAX, Extract PBA, Levitate, Maritime, Terramar and Titan XC. All of these products are available from our partner, Loveland Products, through Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Corn Yield Winners

National corn yield winners include Virginia farmer Heath Cutrell, who, with a yield of 394.05 bu/acre, earned first place in the "Conventional Non-Irrigated" category. His yield was also the highest overall corn yield in this year's contest. Heath was previously featured in Agricen's Last Stand film.

Other national winners who used Agricen's technology include Chad Henderson of Alabama, who placed second nationally in the "Conventional Irrigated" category with a yield of 333.04 bu/acre, and Temple Rhodes of Maryland, who took third place in the nation in the "Strip, Min, Mulch, Ridge-Till Irrigated" category with a yield of 344.94 bu/acre. 

Soybean Yield Winners

Agricen's biocatalyst technologies were also a part of several winning soybean programs. The top place winner of the Pennsylvania Soybean Yield Contest and two first place winners of the Michigan Soybean Association Yield Contest all used at least one of Agricen's technologies in their soybean fertility programs:

  • A. Dale Herr, Jr., 1st Place, Overall & South Central Region, Pennsylvania - 97.49 bu/acre
  • Don Stall, 1st Place, Overall & Late-Maturity, Michigan - 98.88 bu/acre
  • Jim Schaendorf, 1st Place, Mid-Maturity Non-Irrigated, Michigan - 89.40 bu/acre 

We are proud to be part of all of these growers' winning programs and wish them the best of luck this season.

Learn more about the technologies used in the winning programs by downloading the Sustainable Technology Overview.

Download the Overview

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Protecting Yield Potential from Heat and Drought Stress
August 8, 2022 — Posted By Agricen

With many areas of the country in need of moisture, Agricen’s Scott Lay spoke with WITY Radio's Dennis Michelsen about Terramar, a new technology for the row crop market that can help growers protect their yield potential from heat and drought stress.

Dennis - WITY Radio: When it comes to wanting a little more rain and being concerned about stress in our corn and soybeans this time of year, that’s where Terramar comes into play.

Scott - Agricen: Right. Terramar is a new technology for the Midwest corn and soybean markets. We’ve already had it commercially available in high-value fruit and vegetable crops in Florida, California and the coastal areas.

Terramar is a combination of a biological extract of kelp and a carbon source that does two things. One, it helps to minimize effect of heat and drought stress in the plant. We’re trying to protect the yield potential that exists by minimizing yield robbing factors, like heat and drought stress, which are all too often an impediment to yield as the crop matures.

Secondly, it helps with nutrient uptake. As we move through the pollination and flowering to grain-fill phases in both corn and soybeans, it is a critical time in terms of nutrient consumption and nutrient demand. So the more “groceries” we can get into that plant, the better chance we have to optimize yield.

Dennis - WITY Radio: It really doesn’t matter whether they are being applied to a fruit or nut crop or to corn and soybeans. The actual game plan works similar.

Scott - Agricen: That’s very much the case. The factors that drive or impact yield are very comparable across crops. We’ve learned a great deal through our experiences in fruit and vegetable crops, and over the last couple of years we’ve screened Terramar in corn and soybeans and had very consistent results across a wide geography in the Midwest.

Dennis - WITY Radio: This is the perfect time for folks to start experimenting to see what Terramar can do in their fields. If you look at the weather, we are going to need to combat those high stress situations with smarter agronomy.

Scott - Agricen: Heat and drought-like conditions impact yield. That’s a fact. Now, the technology in Terramar is not a replacement for precipitation, nor does it make a 95-degree day 75 degrees. But if you can minimize the impact of that heat and/or drought stress in the plant, that’s a positive thing. It buys you more time and allows the plant to respire more efficiently, create more chlorophyll and undergo more photosynthesis, and that leads to a more consistent and productive yield.

Dennis - WITY Radio: You talked about the wide array of field trials ranging from areas like Kansas that are notoriously dry at this time of year to areas like Central Indiana that get more typical weather. The return on investment and the return in bushels has been quite amazing.

Scott - Agricen: In terms of yield impact, our average across a wide range of corn trials is in that 6 to 8 bushel range and in soybeans we’re looking at a 3 to 5 bushel range. There are instances where conditions are more challenging with heat and drought stress where we've seen upwards of a 10 to 12 bushel response in corn and similar in soybeans. We’re confident in the consistency that Terramar will deliver in terms of yield impact. 

Terramar is available from Nutrien Ag Solutions.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full interview below or on Agricen's YouTube channel.

 

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Three Ways to Combat Drought Stress in Corn
July 25, 2022 — Posted By Agricen

droughtDrought stress can cause significant yield reductions in corn, so it's important for growers to proactively consider ways they can reduce the impact of dry conditions on their crops.

Although growers can't control the weather, they do have options that can help them improve plant health and strengthen their corn crop's stress tolerance in the face of drought.

What Options Do Corn Growers Have for Combating Drought Stress?

Approaches for combatting the effects of drought or dry conditions include:

  • Strobilurin-containing fungicides.
    Strobilurin-containing fungicides have known beneficial effects on corn development, even in the absence of disease.

  • Foliar nutritionals.
    Foliar nutritionals can be added to fungicide applications for even stronger plant health effects. Nutrient absorption in the leaf tissue is highly efficient and can partially make up for shortfalls in root absorption when the soil is dry. In addition, applying relatively small amounts of foliar nutritionals can prompt plants to work harder at extracting nutrients from the soil and can increase drought tolerance.

  • Foliar- or soil-applied biostimulants, biologicals or plant hormone technologies.
    Products in this category can stimulate the plant and/or soil microbes to improve crop tolerance to drought stress and allow energy to go into yield, rather than stress response.

One product in the last category is TERRAMAR, available from Nutrien Ag Solutions. TERRAMAR is designed to improve both nutrient uptake and plant response to weather-related stress, including drought or dry conditions. It can be applied in season to help corn stand up to drought and heat stress.

In a field trial from Illinois (photo below), TERRAMAR was foliar-applied on V5 corn experiencing heat and drought stress. Only four days later, the treated corn looked visibly healthier.

Terramar-corn 01

A field trial from Kansas (photo below) also shows a visual improvement with foliar-applied TERRAMAR on 12-leaf corn that was experiencing both drought and heat stress. The benefits can be seen both above and below the soil, with a healthier looking plant that has a greater stalk diameter, larger root ball, deeper roots, and heavier brace roots.

Terramar-corn 02

What's more, the TERRAMAR-treated plants had 57% greater soil penetration, pulling at the 55-cm level on the water probe measurement, compared to the untreated plants that were not yet pulling at even the 45-cm level when measurements were taken.

With many areas of the nation experiencing hot, dry weather, it's the right time to consider these tools as a way to potentially reduce the total impact of drought conditions.

Learn more about the benefits of the marine-based technology found in TERRAMAR by downloading the corn and soybean bulletin.

Download the Study

 

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