There’s a new twist for a common conventional product now available for the organic market. As Gina Colfer, sustainable solutions agronomy manager for Wilbur-Ellis, explains, BenVireo TerraLux (10-0-0 liquid organic nitrogen (N) fertilizer) is something organic growers may not have dreamed they’d have access to 30 years ago.
Readers also voted BenVireo TerraLux as runner-up in The Scoop’s 19th annual New Product of the Year contest for 2025.
“This is a really new, unique, novel form of organic nitrogen. It’s not new so much on the conventional side, because it is ammonium nitrate, but it is new on the organic side, because it is organic and it is biologically derived from dairy lagoon effluent,” she says. “So, it is a true waste stream that we are taking and making a really needed product for organic growers.”
From its repurposed supply source to its novel crop nutrition for the organic market, this new product got the attention of The Scoop’s audience as they voted it to be the 2025 New Product of the Year runner-up.
“It is a 100% plant-available nitrogen in the form of ammonium nitrate. This is a straight shot, so you don’t have to go through that mineralization process in the soil. And really, nitrogen is one of the limiting factors for organic growers, so this helps the organic grower place their nitrogen when they need it, when their plants need it,” Colfer says.
In addition to flexible application options, one other benefit is low odor.
Colfer says this is a new tool that many organic growers never expected to have access to.
“It is so new that [we’re] helping them understand how to place it in their system and when and how to apply it,” she says. “The product is filtered down to 1 micron, so it can go through any type of irrigation system, even microsprinklers, microdrip, foliar applications through the drone. It has a 0:1 carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, so there is no carbon in it to grow biofilm in any of the drip tapes or tanks that you store it in.”
Its ease of use is something she says is really sticking out with growers who have been part of early trials.
“We’ve done foliar application trials on spinach, where we’ve gone in at 2 gal. per acre and 60 gal. of water in warm weather in the desert, looking for phytotoxicity, because that is a big issue; you look at spinach sideways and it burns,” she says. “We wanted to really be confident, because we feel this is a great leafy greens application. And at that application rate, later in the growing season when the spinach is really running out of gas, we showed no phytotoxicity.”
Other crops with positive trials reported are blueberries, strawberries, broccoli and corn.
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