Meristem launches Homestretch HarvestShield foliar biostimulant for corn and soybeans

Date:06-02-2021

HOMESTRETCH HARVESTSHIELD™ is the new, unique biological and foliar nutrition product recently announced by Meristem Crop Performance as the latest addition to their robust HOMESTRETCH family of foliar nutrition products.

“Given current commodity prices, our farmer-customers are asking us for more solutions to feed the crop all season long and help them gain higher yields,” said Mitch Eviston, founder and CEO of Meristem. “We are thrilled to announce the addition of HARVESTSHIELD to the HOMESTRETCH line-up. We now have seven top quality options for high-yield farmers.” Eviston also took the opportunity to stress Meristem’s commitment to helping farmers.

“We’ve held our prices to make it easier for farmers to win with foliar applications,” he said, pointing out that farmers can still get HOMESTRETCH™ for less than $6 per acre.

“We feel foliar nutrition is a key ingredient to raising a successful crop,” said Nathan Forkner, who grows “a few thousand” acres of corn and beans near Richards, Missouri. “We used HOMESTRETCH ULTRA™ last year and were pretty happy with the results we’ve seen with that product. It tank-mixed well and we didn’t have any problems whatsoever.”

Eviston said growers like Forkner are seeing results with all of Meristem’s foliar products because of their unique, highly-soluble formulations. “These molecules are formulated for better nutrient uptake and movement in the plant,” he explained. “They are designed to mix well and not get bound up with other chemistry. The micronutrients, like zinc, actually help reduce crop stress.”

Crop stress is an issue that comes with high-yield crop production according to Larry Fiene, field agronomist and founder of Planet Earth Agronomy, Middleton, Wisc. He said HARVESTSHIELD and foliar nutrients help solve this plant-stress problem by supplementing the plant’s own abilities, whether it’s corn or soybeans.

“Higher plant populations and more intensive practices will create more stress for the plant,” says Fiene. “The special amino acids and other components of HARVESTSHIELD help the plant produce more of its own defensive compounds to cope with the adversity it’s facing, whether it’s heat, drought, nutrient deficiency or pesticide stress.”

HARVESTSHIELD™, said Fiene, has components vital to stress mitigation and cell division. Different components to the product help the plant in different ways.

 

- Polyphenols protect the plant from oxidation caused by environmental stresses or stresses on the plant during rapid growth stages.

- Auxins are known to stimulate cell division.

- Betaines keep water content stable in plant cells.

- Arginine is an amino acid building block for polyamines. Polyamine production increases during times of environmental stress including drought, heat and high salinity levels in soil.

- Tryptophan is an amino acid building block for Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and assists plants in cell expansion and cell division.

All of it can add up to stronger plants and higher yields, said Fiene. “In corn our stress-plot data is showing yield advantages of 7 to 10 bushel per acre at the low end,” he said. “In high-yield situations we’ve seen combine yield monitors show an advantage of 10 to 20 bushel per acre.”