Biostimulants

Foliar sprays can be more efficient than feeding crops via the soil: they can be more targeted, cheaper, and less environmentally damaging than soil-mediated crop nutrition.    But this is not always so: can foliar nutrition be made reliable ... to support sustainable crop nutrition?

Plants need around 12 essential mineral nutrients to grow: Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), Potassium (K), Magnesium (Mg), Sulphur (S), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn), Copper (Cu), Boron (B) and Molybdenum (Mo).

The major commodity crops in the UK are wheat, barley, oilseed rape, field beans, sugar beet and potatoes, but around half of agricultural land grows grass.   

Share information, knowledge, resources and experience on how we can improve crop perfomance (yield, quality and profitability) whilst reducing reliance on input, reducing impacts and improving environmental performance.

A range of products are commercially available that claim to enable more efficient nutrient uptake, allowing less nutrient to be applied as fertiliser.

The attention placed on soil health in agriculture has been receiving more and more attention in recent years primarily due to our improved understanding of the interactions between soil health and overall crop performance in both arable and horticultural systems. This has led to increased soil monitoring and analysis as well as the adoption of alternative farming methods such as cover-cropping and min-till plowing to improve overall soil longevity. However, this increased adoption of more sustainable practices is heavily restricted to organic systems as conventional farming continues to be heavily reliant on high-input chemical fertilizers. Thus the presence of native Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, (AMF) has been steadily decreasing in soils for decades which has only increased our reliance on these high-input chemical systems, further locking us into a business-as-usual model going forwards. As yield loss from pest pressure and disease susceptibility continue to threaten global food security, costing an estimated $300 billion a year, the race to find the best long-term solutions that pragmatically improve whole system resilience to biotic and abiotic factors is in our midst. Could AMF be part of the solution going, forwards? Here is what we know so far and some recent breakthroughs in the science surrounding it.  

Crop physiology is the study of how plants function and respond to their environment. It involves understanding the factors that affect crop growth and development, such as light, temperature, water, and nutrients, and the physiological mechanisms that plants use to adapt to their environment, such as photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration. 

Agrochemicals are chemical products used for agricultural purposes. Although agrochemicals have high input costs, they are widely used in the farming industry for their beneficial effects on crop yields and quality and associated reduced labour costs. Together with advances in agricultural machinery and infrastructure, the use of agrochemicals played a large role in the Green Revolution. This was a period in the 21st century in which the spread of various agricultural technologies led to greatly increased yields and production globally. However, a number of concerns around agrochemicals exist including negative effects on human health and the environment and the development of pest populations that are becoming resistant to them. A major challenge of modern agriculture is to try and reduce reliance on agrochemicals whilst continuing to increase yields and feed a growing global population.