The product captures nitrogen from the air and converts it into a usable form for the plant
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Canadian farmers will have a new tool available for the 2022 growing season to help them provide crops with nitrogen access all season long.
Corteva Agriscience recently launched Utrisha N, its first ever nutrient efficiency biostimulant.
“It’s applied as a foliar application onto plant material,” Kirsten Ratzlaff, product manager for seed applied technology, fungicides & nitrogen management, told Farms.com. “It enters into the stomata (tiny openings or pores found in the epidermis of leaves and young stems that helps in gas exchange) and colonizes in the leaf cell. It then captures nitrogen in the air and it into ammonium for the plant.”
One unique fact about the process is it doesn’t require any plant energy.
“This means the plant is still focused on advancing and maturing and producing, all while the biological is pulling nitrogen for the plant to thrive,” Ratzlaff said.
Utrisha N is designed for a variety of crops.
For corn and soybean producers in Eastern Canada, for example, the product should be applied in the V4 to V8 stage.
For cereal growers in Western Canada, the optimal timing is the four-leaf jointing stage. In canola, it’s the four leaf to rosette stage, before stem elongation.
“You want to make sure there’s enough plant material,” Ratzlaff said.
When during the day a farmer applies Utrisha N is important too.
Early morning applications are ideal because “that’s when the most amount of stomata is open for the plant to uptake nutrition,” she added.
Corteva has run extensive Utrisha N trials this year.
The product has been applied on more than 200 trial sites across the country in addition to about 400 others in the United States.
Trial data is starting to funnel in, and the early results are positive, Ratzlaff said.
“We’re pleased with the data we’ve received,” she said. “We’re going to have a really great story here in the coming months.”