Educational Series – Product #1: BioEnsure
You won’t want to miss our Educational Series that highlights some of the potentially landmark products that Central Iowa Agronomy and Supply has added to its line-up this year. We will be showcasing these products in a series of emails to provide you additional scientific information.
These products, entering the marketplace, are from small companies that have not been on the national radar. They tend to be effective with much safer exposure profiles. Namely they do not carry a safety or cancer warning. They also carry a high ROI potential and do things most conventional input products don’t.
None of the products are Silver Bullets. Instead they are tools to use within a system.
Educational Series – Product #1 highlights BioEnsure
BioEnsure is from Adaptive Symbiotic Technology from Seattle, WA. Dr. Rusty Rodriguez’s research programs allowed he and his colleagues to discover that plants in nature do not adapt themselves to abiotic stresses such as drought, temperature or salinity. Instead, plants establish symbiotic associations with microscopic fungi that confer abiotic stress tolerance. This remarkable observation was the basis for developing a new seed treatment technology (BioEnsure) to mitigate impacts of climate change in agriculture by generating climate-resilient crops.
This endophytic Trichoderma that lives in the apoplast (the intercellular network between cells) gives the plants great tolerance to very high temps and to very dry conditions. BioEnsure can be applied on seed, in-furrow, or foliar applied. The Midwest is typically not thought of as being a droughty area, but being hot and dry for two to four weeks during the summer has always been typical, and in the bad years like 1977, 1981, 1983, 1988, 2012 drought ratings were in the high level as far as the corn crop reacted. Bob Streit had heard of this product being marketed as ‘Heat Shield’, where it helped greatly in the dry South Dakota growing season of 2017. It will help the plant stay alive and green until the mid-August rains arrive as they did in nearly all the dry growing seasons. A South Dakota cattleman, who did grazing paddock work, from Selby, SD first told me about Dr. Rusty Rodriguez and his work. This allowed him to paddock graze 100 cow calf pairs for 60 days instead of his normal 20 days. This could help him triple his herd numbers without adding acres in upcoming years. His observations were in the summer of 2018 when it was extremely dry in his area.
You will enjoy Dr. Rodriquez’s TED Talk – Unlocking the power of symbiosis in a warming world. Click HERE to watch it.
Check out these links for additional information on BioEnsure.
Attachments:
Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies is using Fungi to Boost Yields
Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies Product Info
Helping Crops thru BioEnsure by Jerry Carlson Aug 22
Apoplasts Story and Diagram
BioEnsure Overview 8.29.18 Power Point