AgroPages-Arysta LifeScience's Unlock 5 strategies help crop reach genetic potential-Agricultural news

Even with advancements in seed genetics and traits, growers still encounter limitations imposed by environmental factors that chip away at yields throughout the growing season. Arysta LifeScience is helping to change that with UNLOCK 5™, an initiative designed to help growers achieve higher yields and optimize financial returns by unlocking the genetic potential of the crop at key stages of its life cycle.

UNLOCK 5 includes strategies and solutions to promote optimal plant development, resulting in improved performance and increased tolerance to environmental stress factors. The solutions include plant-growth regulators and other plant-health and innovative nutrition products, applied individually, in combination or as sequential applications.

“Every crop year, growers face environmental factors ranging from weather challenges to pest and disease infestations that limit the genetic potential of the seed,” says Royce Schulte, BioSolutions and Innovative Nutrition Business Manager, Arysta LifeScience. “Through UNLOCK 5, growers can bring balance to the changing environment at important stages of the crop life cycle by improving the crop’s ability to respond to adverse environmental stresses and reach more of its genetic potential.”

Maximizing the crop at each stage

UNLOCK 5 helps growers maximize plant development at each of the five stages of the crop life cycle. Those five stages are:

• Establishment — Focus is on developing root mass, promoting shoot emergence and achieving vigor and uniformity of crop emergence.

• Architecture — Focus is on providing for a solid root architecture, stem diameter and yield structures (such as corn ears).

• Photosynthesis — Focus is on creating greater leaf mass to promote greater photosynthetic activity, chlorophyll utilization and CO2 fixation.

• Reproduction — Focus is on grain size and quality, which is determined by promoting efficient flowering, pollination and cell division.

• Sizing — Focus is on movement of sugars from vegetative tissues to reproductive tissues, which helps determine yield.

Field tested and proven

Arysta LifeScience technical personnel have performed extensive field testing of UNLOCK 5 solutions at each of the different physiological stages of the crop’s development, under various field conditions and in a variety of geographic locations, to verify their efficacy. The key is to find positive plant physiological responses to products used at target timings and rates that will result in a positive return on investment for the grower.

“In our studies, we’re measuring physiological characteristics such as root and shoot mass, carbon assimilation and the photosynthetic potential of the plant,” Schulte asserts. “If there is a positive effect, resulting in a healthier and more robust plant, providing a positive ROI for the grower, then we move forward with the UNLOCK 5 recommendation.”

Mitigating stress, maximizing opportunities

For example, in corn, the V4 to V6 stage is when maximum kernel rounds are being developed in the plant. It’s a critical time, and RAZE™ 0-3-2 foliar nutrition is an important part of the UNLOCK 5 recommendation to maximize nutrient assimilation and water uptake so the plant has the best chance to meet its potential at that stage.

RAZE 0-3-2 is a new, advanced foliar-nutrition product that promotes more balanced uptake of essential plant nutrients necessary for optimum crop growth and higher yields. In three years of replicated on-farm field trials, RAZE 0-3-2 has provided a consistent 6.1 bushel-per-acre yield increase in corn when it’s applied at the V5 stage.

Additional components of UNLOCK 5 include TEPERA®, TEPERA PLUS, FORTIX®and ZOLERA® FX Fungicides. They are plant health products that aid in corn development, resulting in enhanced plant tolerance to environmental stress.

“We’re excited to bring together the right resources to unlock the potential of the crop at every stage,” Schulte says. “Through UNLOCK 5, growers can achieve greater genetic potential of the seed from the time it’s planted to harvest.”