Building resilience in plants – by treating seeds with a biostimulant seed treatment – is one part of the jigsaw that growers can use to help their crops withstand and adapt to the adverse effects of extreme weather and protect genetic potential as soon as it goes in the ground.
The unprecedented wet autumn/winter of 2023 left many farmers bearing the brunt of eleven named storms from September, resulting in crops either being flooded or damaged by the wet weather, or growers unable to establish/fertilise their crops at all.
To withstand the harsher climate we seem to be experiencing more regularly, farmers need support to help their soils recover faster from both floods and droughts.
Building resilience in crops using a biostimulant seed treatment involves enhancing the seeds’ ability to withstand stress and improve overall plant health. Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to utilise the benefits of biostimulant seed treatments this autumn to help build resilience and increase cropping success:
Key Points:
- Choose the right biostimulant
- Consider Newton to build resilience
- Select high-quality seeds
- Ask for Newton
- Optimise coverage on the seed
- Monitor establishment
Step-by-step guide to using Biostimulant Seed Treatments
Biostimulants applied to the seed can help to speed up germination and emergence, increase rooting and nutrient uptake, and improve crop vigour and the plant’s stress tolerance.
Choose the right biostimulant
Select the biotsimulant type(s) most suitable for your system:
- Microbial innoculants: Enhance nutrient uptake and improve soil structure. Applying live bacteria to the seed can be a risk as you hope it will populate the soil to provide a beneficial effect. Once applied to the seed it must be drilled within 48 hours.
- Micronutritional: Immediate feed source. Often not actually a biostimulant, but lumped into the category of bisotimulants. These are a great way to ensure young seedlings have immediate access to nutrition but plant roots do not have to travel very far in the soil rhizosphere to find it, resulting in lazy roots. This can cause problems later down the line, such as the risk of lodging, unused nutrients deeper in the seedbed, and if conditions change, there is a risk of drought and stunted growth.
- Seaweed extracts: Promote root growth and improve stress tolerance. Many different products are available and can be beneficial. The downside is it is an extract from a live organism and concentration and quality varies.
- Phytohormones – amino acids and peptides: Arguably the most important – not just for the seed – plant hormones must be balanced throughout the life of the plant. They play a key role in protein synthesis and improving plant metabolism – ”waking” dormant seed, signaling root and shoot growth and improving stress tolerance.
Whichever product(s) you choose, ensure biostimulants used are of high quality as efficacy will vary between manufacturers – it’s important to choose reliable products. Look for data on the product’s efficacy.
CONSIDER NEWTON TO BUILD RESILIENCE
Based on plant-sourced signalling peptides – a type of plant hormone – Newton biostimulant ST is the natural eco-friendly alternative to chemical seed treatment that stimulates plants to thrive naturally, helping you to build greater resilience into your cropping system.
Select high quality seeds
Plant the best quality seeds for optimal resilience.
Home saving seed – Test home saved seed for germination rates, vigour and health before planting:
- Testing prior to dressing: Germination should ideally be over 90% and tests will be available for diseases such as bunt, loose smut and seedling blight. For beans, test for Ascochyta and stem nematode and for conventional rape test for high erucic acid levels.
- Select big bold seed: Gravity separators do a good job of screening out the low bushel weight seed typically retaining the boldest 70%. The separator can be adjusted to split out less or more; the more selective the setting the higher the resultant TGW. Putting the grain over a gravity separator will retain seeds with higher vigour, higher germination rate and high emergence percentage and consequently plants that will tiller more and have a greater root mass too.
Certified seed – Certified Seed is a fully traceable, weed-free, guaranteed seed product and part of a world-wide quality assurance system. Select the varieties for your farm most suitable to your growing conditions.
Ask for Newton
If you’re looking to get your crops off to a stronger, more resilient start this autumn, we’d recommend trying Newton.
Newton treated seed can be ordered through any of the following merchants below. You can also ask your mobile seed treater to apply it for you in the same way they would a traditional dressing. If your usual supplier is not listed, ask them to get in touch with us. We are always looking to expand our supply routes.
Alternatively, if you have the kit to apply a dressing to the seed, you can do this yourself.
Newton can be supplied in 5 litre cans, 200 litre drums or 1,000 litre IBC.
Agrii, Anglia Grain Services, Cope, Dods of Haddington, Alexander Harley Seeds Ltd, Messrs Alex Brewster, McCreath Simpson & Prentice, Goldingham Contracts, Frontier Agriculture Ltd, Wynnstay, CYO Seeds
Optimise coverage on the seed
Newton should be applied at an application rate of 1 litre per tonne of seed. If required, it can watered down to aid application.
As it is designed to stimulate the seed, good even coverage of all seeds is recommended for best results.
Newton is a very easy to handle, flexible seed dressing than can be co-applied with other treatments such as single purpose dressing or nutritional dressing to meet your needs. It can also be used in organic systems.
Monitor establishment
Regularly monitor crop performance to assess the impact of your biostimulant application against untreated controls.
On-farm trials are a good way to compare product performance on your soils, in your climatic conditions and within your wider inputs plan. Keep in mind that biostimulants can also be used to bring weaker parts of the field up in terms of performance, and here, large tramline trials are a good way of assessing the benefits versus untreated.
Dig plants to assess rooting benefits – this is a key benefit of Newton which you could otherwise miss. Do not underestimate the benefits of improved rooting early in the life of the plant – it will set your plants up for the entire crop cycle.
Discover more, get in touch
Download our latest Newton booklet here to learn more about the benefits Newton could offer you.
If you have any questions or need technical assistance, please contact our technical manager, Stuart Sutherland, using the contact facility below.