Renewable Farming

Stress-relieving endophytes, BioEnsure and BioTango, showed promise again this dry season

This soybean yield map offers one more clue that when dry weather stresses your crop, the specialized endophyte microbes in “BioEnsure” and “BioTango” can help your crop endure longer.

September 30, 2020 — One of our innovative WakeUP clients in north central Iowa foliar-sprayed the Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies organisms on soybeans in early August. The yield map nearby offers some evidence that treated beans hung onto pods and kept filling despite only 0.2 inch of rain in July and August. 

We always wish for random-replicated strip trials, such as those we’ve conducted on the Renewable Farming test farm. But those often aren’t feasible for growers with 100-foot spray booms. So we try to read the signals from split fields like this one, while recognizing that soil variations exert strong variability. There’s no way to calculate a statistically significant difference from this field, but common sense indicates just what the grower observed: “This biological product line is worth looking into further.”

The team at Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies is currently tracking several on-farm field trials across the Midwest. Developers Rusty Rodriguez and Regina Redman report that results so far this season are consistent with random-rep trials they’ve conducted in previous years. Rodriguez saw this yield map and commented, “The yield map is impressive and supports other observations indicating that applying products to drought impacted plants, even in R-phase, brings significant benefits!”

When a season’s growing conditions are more stressful, benefits are greater compared with untreated crops. Even in normal seasons, yield increases usually pay for the products. Overall, there’s a financial “win” about 80% of the time. 

Advanced Symbiotic Technologies says their live endophytes can be applied to seed — a very economical approach — or with in-furrow products, or foliar sprayed. This season marks 12 years of the firm’s research. The company’s website reports, “During low stress growing seasons, BioEnsure® treated seeds increase crop yields an average of 2-6%. However, during high stress growing seasons, BioEnsure® treated seeds increases crop yields an average of 10-50%.”

The firm’s website documents detailed, replicated results for corn, soybeans and other crops. Just click on the “Field Results” tab of the home page.

 

For an earlier Midwest photo showing this technology, click here to see an interim report on how corn held up in recent weeks.