Foliar applied nitrogen boosting | The Western Producer

Corteva Agriscience Canada stepped into the agricultural biologicals market with the launch of Utrisha N, a nutrient efficiency biostimulant.

Biostimulants are a subset of biologicals whose purpose is to trigger a plant’s natural processes to enhance its performance.

Kirsten Ratzlaff of Corteva said Utrisha N boosts a plant’s nitrogen efficiency.

Corteva does not have any number yet in terms of the amount of nitrogen inputs the biostimulant can replace, if any, and it has not released how much it will cost farmers.

However, Ratzlaff said Corteva is conducting research in Canada to better understand how the product performs here.

“The role of Utrisha N is to provide a sustainable, supplemental source of nitrogen and really a continuous source of nitrogen throughout the growing season,” Ratzlaff said.

“It’s really a supplement to our existing nitrogen program to ensure the plant has what it needs, when it needs it throughout the growing season. So, it works hand in hand with our conventional fertilizer practices.”

She said the product reduces the dependency on nitrogen uptake from the soil and will be most helpful to plants in the mid to latter half of the growing season.

“That’s where Utrisha N comes in, to provide that supplement and that sustainable natural source continuously through the plant’s life cycle without using any plant energy,” Ratzlaff said.

It will “continuously pull nitrogen from the air and fix it through the plant. It will just always have the nitrogen that it needs, setting that crop up for optimal yield.”

She said Utrisha N is a natural bacterium that colonizes the leaf cells after it enters the plant through the stomata, and then converts nitrogen from the air into a usable state for the plant.

The product is foliar applied, and for best results it should be applied early in the morning when the greatest number of plant stomata are open.

“Crop staging varies by crop, but essentially you want to make sure that there is sufficient plant biomass so that Utrisha N can be taken in by healthy plants or healthy leaf material,” Ratzlaff said.

“In canola, our application timing is four leaf to bolting, in cereals it is four leaf to jointing and in corn and soybeans the application timing is V4 to V8.”

Corteva is researching if the biostimulant can be tank-mixed with herbicide, fungicides, or with foliar applied nutritional products.

To help get over the suspicion some growers have toward biological-based products, Ratzlaff said Utrisha N, and other products the Corteva will soon add to its biological portfolio, will undergo years of testing to make sure they work.

“Our Corteva biological portfolio pipeline is full of exciting developments. We’re investing in multiple subsets of biologicals, so biostimulants like Utrisha N but also in the bio control products and pheromones,” Ratzlaff said.