Recently, our sister brand of Growing Produce (under the Meister Media Worldwide umbrella) took a look at how biostimulants can assist plants with water utilization and other factors affecting their health. Here’s a look at their findings:
Biostimulants are emerging as powerful allies to plants in the battle against environmental stresses like droughts and heavy rainfall. These plant health products enhance resilience by promoting stronger root development, improving water and nutrient uptake, and strengthening the plant’s natural defense mechanisms. They play a crucial role in effective water management practices by creating better soil structure and improving both drainage and water retention.
In recent years, there has been notable progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling plant responses and adaptations to drought and rain deluge. By stimulating nutrient absorption, root growth, and stress response mechanisms, biostimulants enhance a plant’s ability to withstand environmental changes and optimize growth and productivity.
“Biostimulants can stimulate beneficial microbes in the soil, and what these beneficial microbes, bacteria, and fungi, are able to do is promote a plant’s ability to manage drought stress through effective regulation of their stomata to maximize water use efficiency when they are dealing with low moisture conditions,” says Gus Plamann, Senior Technical Agronomist, Biome Makers. “Microbes also can improve the conditions of the soil in ways that improve water retention, and ultimately better allow the plant access to moisture.”
Enhancing how biostimulants work to improve water use efficiency in plants is crucial as it can help crops grow better when facing a drought. It also offers a sustainable solution for farmers wanting to optimize and preserve the use of an increasingly precious resource: irrigation water.
“The first thing is improving the water retention and absorption inside the plant. The biomolecules inside our biostimulant work through biochemical actions on the plant physiology,” says Alfredo Sgrignuoli, Global Product Manager for Nutrient Use Efficiency and Inoculant Technologies at Syngenta Biologicals. “The second thing is optimizing plant water use. We work to increase the Water Use Efficiency parameter, which enhances photosynthesis and permits better biomass allocation, while increasing important health indices and the biosynthesis of key intermediate metabolites necessary for plant growth.”
The original article can be found on the Growing Produce website, along with more news coverage for specialty crop growers.
