Crop Biostimulants

Crop biostimulant is abundant and complex in its function, causing plethora of questions on selecting, using, and evaluating its on-farm efficacy.

Hello Everyone, Rachael Long (Farm Advisor in Yolo County) and myself will collaborate with UC IPM to host a series of four 1-hour educational webinars regarding the use of biostimulants and plant growth regulators in crop production, with a focus on vegetable and field crops.

This is a challenging year. Due to the COVID-19, we only implemented one biostimulant trial. We collaborated with BioWorks, Inc. to evaluate the use of a biofungicide (Root Shield Plus) and biofertilizer (On-Gard) alone or in combination to impact watermelon growth and yield production.

The biostimulant trials were conducted during the summer of 2019 with the collaborations of two companies. Study results have been reported to the California tomato growers and industry. Please check the attached file for the access to the results.

Recently, two evaluation trials of crop biostimulants in Patterson were harvested. These two trials involved a Calcium-based and fungi-containing products, aiming to maintain yield and plant health, and protect crop quality. Ten and eight plants were hand harvested from the respective trial.