Proactive use of micronutrients can improve the health of crops, leading to potential savings in inputs and increased yields, according to an agronomist with several years experience of micronutrient field trials.

Speaking at the launch of a new range of micronutrient products from Safagrow, Chris Rigley, founder of the Crop Nutrition Initiative and senior agronomist for Yorkshire Arable Marketing, said not enough growers paid attention to nutrition in sufficient detail.

Trials where disease levels were much lower in plots treated with nutrition and reduced fungicide inputs compared with full fungicide inputs and no nutrition were his “eureka” moment, he explained. “It is about producing plants healthy enough to withstand disease.”

In particular, he believed the first 30 to 40 days in a crop’s life were critical in capturing the genetic potential of the plant, which was why he had developed a system to spray liquid nutrition, especially phosphite, onto the seed and surrounding soil at planting.

In trials, the system had improved rooting in the early stages of seed growth generating greater root mass, thereby optimising yield potential, he said.

Bill Angus, a well-known wheat breeder, agreed nutrition was an area that had not been addressed when looking to optimise yields. “Nutrients are part of the solution to higher and more reliable yields, but there is very little genetic variability for breeders to use.”

Instead, he believed government-funded research funds should be made available to investigate micronutrient requirements and delivery mechanisms more carefully.

Balanced crop nutrition programmes were part of the solution to producing more, while impacting less, said Andrew Low, Safagrow sales and marketing director.

The firm was committed to introducing a fresh approach to nutrition for UK growers, starting with its Aloy range of suspension concentrates.

Those had a novel mousse-like formulation that helped extend shelf life to at least 30 months, while retaining a good tank-mixing profile and allowing faster leaf uptake, he said.

Current suspension concentrates were highly loaded micronutrient formulations, which reduced the number of applications growers needed to make and had a good long-term effect on the leaf, he explained.

But they typically only had a shelf life of up to 24 months, and because of their high loading were difficult to pour and to clean out the can. “The insoluble raw materials that allow the high loading need to be broken down to be absorbed, which causes a natural delay. With the commodity products, growers are used to seeing crops green up quite quickly.”

Safagrow’s novel formulation, which includes manganese, copper, magnesium and sulphur products with calcium and zinc to follow, used a mixture of surfactants that formed a mousse-like structure in the can when left undisturbed.

“It is a bit like non-drip paint,” Mr Low said. “When you shake the can it immediately goes back into a liquid formulation, which is easily poured and washed out of the can when triple-rinsed.”

The new formulation helped extend shelf life until at least 30 months, while the manganese formulation, which contained manganese nitrate as well as carbonate, also allowed quicker re-greening of deficient spring barley than the market-leading SC formulation in trials, he said.

Adding the nitrate to the formulation hadn’t effected the SC’s tank mix performance, said John Lockett, from distributor Agrovista, who are the sole supplier of the range this season.