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From Chemicals to Biologicals: The Future of Crop Management · Cereal Killers

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Music.
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Hi, welcome back to Serial Killers, the podcast all about the pests,
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diseases, weeds and challenges of arable crops.
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However, it may be of interest to people who grow other crops,
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horticulturalists and gardeners, because today we're talking about biologicals
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and the transition from chemicals to biologicals.
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So this year we put together a biologicals program for cereals.
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However, that you can be adapted very easily to other
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crops and this is looking for
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people who transition some or all of their agrochemicals from
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chemical-based ones to biological-based products
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so not all of these products are sold by eutrema and
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where there is a better product i i will explain which
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of those products are if there's a better place to purchase them i'll
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name those those places because i've got a good deal
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of expertise when it comes to biological products and i'm
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more than happy to share with you the
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the best place to go for them rather than you having to go
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through me and add a margin to get them
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so the first thing is in early.
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Spring this is when biostimulants come
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into their own in the uk because adas
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did a study that showed that light levels
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are very high comparatively in the spring but
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the in the uk but it's the temperature and
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soil temperatures that lags behind that due to
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the you know the jet stream and things like that so getting a
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biostimulant on early can be very beneficial
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so this can mean the main one that we recommend for
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crop establishment is seaweed
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extract and so we we make a cold processed
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seaweed extract at eutreema however there
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are many different types of seaweed extracts out there we
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do not sort of entertain the fight for
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solids content which happened in
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the seaweed extracts industry where everyone tries to get the most concentrated
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form and certain and to do that they ended up heating the seaweed up and extracting
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it with potassium hydroxide which is what's in oven cleaner and then And you
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solubilize all the cellulose and you get very high solids content.
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But we believe that's at the expense of the biochemicals that are of benefit
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in the seaweed extractor.
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So we'd be just a cold process one where we flash pasteurize it,
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which helps with stability, but also helps and shelf life, but at the same time
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maintains the chemicals within that.
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So that's our sort of philosophy when it comes to seaweed extracts.
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And we recommend about three litres per hectare for seaweed extract.
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And that can be applied from growth stages one to four.
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If required for establishment, it can be applied throughout the growing season in some crops.
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And so that's going to cost you about four pounds
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80 from four pounds 80 per hectare for three liters
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per hectare the other product i recommend going
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on early is a beneficial bacteria so
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at half a liter per hectare depending on the product
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we don't sell a beneficial bacteria at
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the moment we have in the past however the problem
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with beneficial bacteria is that they're they're always
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like you and me bacterial products are always dying i'm
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not a fermenter of bacteria at eutremus we don't ferment bacteria so we would
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be buying other people's product keeping it on the shelf and it would be dying
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and it would be losing viability so i would say go direct to a manufacturer
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so omex produce a really good product called biomex starter.
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Legume technologies in nottingham every now they have a good bacterial product
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but it's not always available 12 months of the year they are a primary manufacturer
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of bacterial products though so they're a great place to go to legume technology
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in nottingham and that supports british industry,
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There are a few other good products. If you've got an idea of a product and
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you want to know if it's any good, let me know.
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There are some bad ones out there. I've worked for some companies with some
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terrible bacterial products over the years before I started Eutrema.
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So I know the good and the bad and the ugly when it comes to that.
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Mycorrhizae is another product you can put on. I would recommend putting mycorrhizae
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on when it comes to cereals and other field crops as a seed coating.
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So putting propagules rather than
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spores on on the seed coat you can
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put spores on as well suppose and we don't obviously again
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even we don't manufacture mycorrhizae we recommend
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a company called symbio symbio with
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an m on the end and they are based
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in the czech republic now there's a couple of companies that have
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very similar names so make sure it's the company that's based in the
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czech republic or czechia as it's called now and
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the way that i like to get the mycorrhizae
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on is i i mix you
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coat it afterwards with chytosan which is which we manufacture here at utreema
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and as well as being a biofungicide it's a bioplastic so it will when it dries
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a form a nice coat over the seed that will help retaining the mycorrhizae at the same time.
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So mycorrhizae are great. Annual crops, the return on investment is not as good
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as perennial crops. So if you're growing trees, the first thing you would do
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is put a mycorrhizae on because the benefit will last for decades.
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Just had to pause the podcast there because somebody in a souped up hatchback
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chavmobile just went past the office and was too loud.
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So where was I? Mycorrhizae. So we talked about mycorrhizae,
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seaweed extracts and bacteria just to get the crop growing.
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So you'll notice I'm not talking about anything about pest or disease management
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yet. These are purely biostimulants.
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And then when we get into growth stage
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one to four and from seedling growth through to
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booting don't ask me what booting is but i'm just
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reading this off my sheet that i've developed you would.
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Want to go on with four sprays of products to limit
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fungal fungal fungal pathogen growth so
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the first pass will always be our chitosan biofungicide
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this is a european union bio
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basic substance so it can be used as a biofungicide it's
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what's in the exoskeletons of
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all the pests and in the cell walls of all the fungal pathogens
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and so plants have evolved to
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detect it as non-self and a
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lot of the fungal pathogens as i've said previously on
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this podcast they have evolved a way of turning on
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chitin and chitosan turning them off on
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the plant so we go in and spray chitosan everywhere
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and that turns on the plant defense mechanisms and it
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also as i said it's a bioplastic so it it holds on
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to the spores and stops them traveling in the air and we recommend
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about two litres per hectare however that dose
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rate can be halved it can be doubled but if you're going on
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at two litres per hectare it's about £6.60 per hectare for
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every application and that works well on its own particularly against rust and
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mildews and then you can have either as a second pass or you can tank mix potassium
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silicate in there as well so silica being what's in sand and glass makes your
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crop when it's absorbed by your crop up.
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Stiffens it up and makes it much more resistant to disease, abiotic stress,
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lodging and things like that.
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So potassium silicate is a great thing to add. And we also can add salicylic
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acid as a defence solicitor at very low dose rates, something like 200 mils a litre.
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The potassium silicate is going on about one and a half litres per hectare.
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And so your total cost there is about, for
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all those three is about 13 pounds a hectare
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and then you can carry on with those
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potassium silicate applications through ear
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emergence to milk development sounding like an agronomist
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i have no idea what this means i think milk development is where
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the where you crush the the developing wheat and milk
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comes out so yeah i won't pretend to be
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an expert on this i am a plant scientist pure plant scientist and
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plant biochemist so you can carry on
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that potassium silicate it increases your cell walls it's
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going to help prevent lodging and so
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you a full program of those
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three products in those in those dose rates is going to come in around 121 pounds
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per hectare now you might think that's crazy expensive you add on top of that
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the seaweed you know five pounds a hectare and and the the bacteria and maybe 60 pounds a hectare.
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Then you know this is very much a pick and mix and so i'm not advising you do everything,
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in fact there's loads of other things you you could potentially include as biologicals
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on your crop like our blackgrass pathogen spores you know if you've got blackgrass
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is a big problem we've been trialing those on a number of farms and we've kept
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the price down at like six pounds a hectare because we,
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we understand it's an additional cost to this biological this biological cannot replace.
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Herbicides it's not a herbicide so we've been.
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That in mind in the cost other things that you might want
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to be adding you might want to add a phosphite as
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a rooting biostimulant especially if you've got things like
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nematodes or fungal pathogens and you
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want your crop to grow away and establish a really big root
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system to begin with and potassium phosphite is a good
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one that can be used in the uk potassium humate
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you can either apply granules or before
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you sew or you can apply a foliar
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liquid and we produce a 30 super concentrate
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humic which is really popular this season liquid
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gypsum is another product we apply not strictly a biological but
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improves aeration and if you improve in aeration.
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And and drainage then you'll
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be improving the microbial life in the soil and
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guano that's another option that said bat poo
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that comes from you can get albatross guano but
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apparently it's not organically certifiable something to
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do with the way it's harvested but you know whether bat
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poo is better than albatross poo i'm not sure and if you're a
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regenerative farmer you're not necessarily organic so you could potentially use
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both the problem with guano is getting hold of
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the damn stuff i deal with a number of guano suppliers
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and they seem to only check the emails about once every
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six months and you can get them from all around the world Chilean Peruvian Madagascan
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Indonesian basically anywhere where they don't check their emails must have
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been a great time it must be great to live out there because you don't check
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your emails once I wish I could only check my emails once a month.
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So yeah if you I'm on the hunt for a good guano supplier so I might go on a
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world tour of all the guano producing back crazy places around the world i just swore sorry,
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i'll get my my tech guy to bleep that bit because i always turn off podcasts where they swear.
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And because you think oh well you know
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they won't mind like farmers won't mind me swearing but if you're listening
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to this in the in the car and you've got kids then that's
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not going to be cool is it so i always turn off podcasts where they swear when i've
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got kids in the car so i'm always very mindful of that
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other things you might include in a in a not
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necessarily a biological course program but in in a
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regenerative program you might
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include a magnesium product a potassium product
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a micronutrients product or a nitrogen folia
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folia nitrogens are very popular in regent at
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the moment we can supply all three
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of those you probably come to us with nitrogen there are better places
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to get nitrogen than than utrema but certainly magnesium and
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potassium we do we do some really interesting products based
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around them and micronutrients as well it's always important
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with micronutrients to source your products that are
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not based a lot of micronutrient products are based for sports
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turf and you don't want to be applying a sports turf
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based product to a cereal crop because sports
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turf products are very high in iron and you don't
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necessarily want a lot of iron or there's already too
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much iron in the soil for cereal crops so
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make sure there's not that and obviously as i've talked about before on
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previous episodes don't be applying cobalt and nickel with your micronutrient
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products because these are carcinogenic ingredients and also they're not required
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by the plant there is no deficiencies of cobalt and nickel in UK or most farm.
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Soils or virtually every farm soil if it's a proper soil for ground crops.
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So steer away from any product containing those two i think
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that's about it really for biologicals if
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you can think of a biological oh i know biological i've missed
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amino acids so amino acids are great they're really
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good at root stimulants so it's sort of like an alternative to potassium phosphate
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if you want to get your your roots growing away a good root system the mixing
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a seaweed extract with amino acids is really good we supply a fungal amino acid
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it's not on our website, but we supply that to a number of growers.
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You can get them from other sources though. A lot of them are from the waste
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streams from animal or plant food production.
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So chicken feathers, pig's blood, amino A, I think that's pig's blood if I'm not wrong.
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So a lot of the chicken feather ones seem to come from Italy for some reason,
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or certainly the Mediterranean.
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You can also get amino acids from fungal
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cultures but we go for a fungal one because it's it's easy it's fully dispersible
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and the reason why it's really good for root growth is that it contains very
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high levels of glutamic acid and of all the amino acids glutamic acid is by far the most,
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bioactive it's something like a thousand or ten thousand times more active than
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all the other amino acids that stimulate in root production and that's because
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glutamic acid is a sign that there has been some sort of animal decomposing
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in the soil and so roots grow around that to harvest the nutrients being released.
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Now you don't want to be applying just glutamic acid because a thing about amino
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acid production in plants is once they receive one amino acid they think that
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because it must be coming from
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a natural source, but they don't think obviously they've evolved, that,
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a sign of one amino
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acid is a sign that there's a whole group of amino acids
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from that pathway of production must be
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in the soil around it because plants have
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evolved in a natural situation where amino acids are coming from the
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breakdown of biological materials and so.
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If the plant just gets glutamic acid it turns
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off synthesis of all the related amino acids
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in that synthesis chain and so your
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plant can actually die from a lack of amino acids
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if you just treat it with one amino acid so that's
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why you don't get single amino
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acid based products or if they do they're not the they're
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not the pure form of the amino acid the other
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amino acid that you want to look for in blends is tryptophan
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and tryptophan is important for plants because it's required
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for the synthesis of auxin which again auxin
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is very important when it comes to root growth and root stimulation it's what's
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in rooting gels that are used in horticulture
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so amino acids i mean we've seen
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really good results we've got a hop grower who's been
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mixing our seaweed extracts with amino acids and seeing
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fantastic results on hop establishment
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and won loads of awards really prestigious.
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Awards for his hops this year last year
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when it was terrible rain and hailstones and everyone
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else's crops were pretty poor so we're really encouraged
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by the results on there for our seaweed and amino acid products as
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i say there are other amino acids out sorry other biostimulants
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out there plant-based biostimulants if you
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want a second opinion on any biostimulant let
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me know as you'll know from this this podcast i won't
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just automatically say that's a terrible biostimulant and
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use r1 instead because i've hyped up and said that some people's products here
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i've given the omex the leg game technology the symbiome product a shout out
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guano mycorrhizae you know so feel free to to email me and say and give and
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ask for an opinion on that,
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and yeah that's been serial killers for today biologicals thank you very much
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and how to integrate them into serials.
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If you thought this was interesting, please share it with somebody who else
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might find it interesting. Thank you.