Two Tips to Thrive Through Stressful Spring Conditions

At this time of year, Mother Nature can put your young crop through a lot – cold temperatures, hot temperatures, hail, lack of moisture, or too much moisture – anything is possible. We can’t change the forecast, but we can set up the crop so that it has the best chance to thrive through whatever is thrown at it.

Two tips for setting your crop up to thrive through stressful spring conditions:

Get Proactive! Prevent a Nutrient Deficiency

By equipping your crop with the nutrients it needs, in the most available form, it has a higher chance of bouncing back from a stressful situation.

• Having adequate nutrition supplied to the crop during times of stress can be the difference between surviving and thriving.
• When a crop is recovering from a stressed state, adding other stresses such as a herbicide application can really set the crop back and negatively impact yield production.

Pair Your Nutrition with a Biostimulant

“A biostimulant without nutrition is like having a turbo engine in your truck but you are out of gas.”

This spring, many growers are choosing to use a biostimulant to enhance nutrient uptake, nutrient use efficiency, tolerance to environmental stress, and/or enhance crop quality. According to a recent Stratus Ag Research survey, representing 1,805 growers across Canada, 22.7% of growers used a biostimulant on their farm in 2023. The expectation is that this trend will continue to grow as more growers experience the benefits these new technologies provide.

Biostimulants:

• Work with nutrition to enhance nutrient uptake or efficiency, making it easier for the plant to start back up again after a stressful event.
• Drive rooting for moisture and nutrient acquisition. 
• Reduce the impacts of an abiotic stress by allowing the plant to continue to respire and photosynthesize throughout an exposure to stress.
• Keep the plant from “turning off” or shutting down during stress.

Using a pre-formulated foliar product that has a combination of nutrition and biostimulants is an easy and effective way deliver your crop what it needs to thrive through stress.

ReLeaf Platinum:

• Provides essential nutrients and contains the proper nutrients in the right ratio to grow deeper, stronger roots to access moisture and nutrients from the soil.
• Consists of two novel biostimulants – Transit-S and Cellburst Technology – to maximize the efficacy of the formulation and address abiotic stress.

Adding ReLeaf Platinum to your herbicide will improve plant health in three ways:

Gives seedlings a second boost – ReLeaf Platinum is your crop’s second opportunity for a starter fertilizer.

Helps plants grow deeper, stronger roots – At herbicide timing the crop is growing though major vegetative changes such as cell division and cell elongation. An application of ReLeaf Platinum ensures a healthier plant with more vigorous roots, allowing the plant to focus more on growth and building energy to drive yields.

Relieves plant stress – ReLeaf Platinum provides the essential foliar nutrients and biostimulants to speed up the plant’s metabolism, which allows the plant to break down the herbicide quickly and mitigate damage.

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For more information, please contact your local Richardson Pioneer Ag Business Centre.