With nitrogen prices continuing to soar, many farmers are looking for ways to manage the cost of fertilizer as well as meet crop demands for the key nutrient in 2022.
This week, Corteva Agriscience Canada put a new option on the table for farmers to consider with the launch of Utrisha N, the company’s first nutrient efficiency bio-stimulant. It touts the product as a “sustainable tool for supplying nitrogen throughout the crop cycle in an effective and controlled way.”
“It gives farmers a naturally derived biological tool to effectively manage their nitrogen investment, reduce their carbon footprint, and provide crops access to nitrogen all season long,” Corteva says in a release.
Corteva says that Utrisha N works by capturing nitrogen from the air and converting it into a usable form for the plant while enhancing plant growth. It makes the crop more resilient by providing it with a constant supply of the nutrient.
“Nitrogen remains one of the biggest cost factors for Canadian farmers when growing crops, but it’s readily available in the earth’s atmosphere,” says Kirsten Ratzlaff, Corteva’s product manager for seed applied technology, fungicides, and nutrient management. Utrisha N is “a natural bacterium that fixes nitrogen from the air and provides crops with an alternative source that reduces dependency on nitrogen uptake from the soil.”
The biological’s mode of action is a naturally found bacteria that can be applied during existing field applications with existing equipment. Its application window extends beyond the early growing season says the company.
Utrisha N is designed for established crops across Canada, including canola, cereals, corn, and soybeans.
For corn and soybeans in Eastern Canada, application should be in the V4 to V8 stage. For Western Canadian farmers, optimal timing for all types of cereals is the four-leaf jointing stage. In canola, the application window is four leaf to rosette stage, before stem elongation.