Seed Lubrication and Agronomic Punch With Seed + Graphite
Verdesian eyes 2022 as big growth year for its latest seed product—Seed + Graphite, which is a three-pronged product providing seed flowability plus agronomic benefits.
As Dr. Mike Canady, Director of Agronomy at Verdesian, explains, this is a unique product in the market with its combined components:
- 80/20 Talc and graphite blend
- Micronutrients (calcium, iron, zinc copper, manganese, moly)
- Biostimulants and metabolites (extracted from seaweed)
The formulation is the result of a proprietary technology from Cytozyme, which Verdesian acquired in 2021.
A lunch pail for the seedling.
Joe Vaillancourt, product manager for Verdesian, shares the micronutrient package is customized to boost seed germination and seed emergence to set up the crop for success.
“This is a full micronutrient package to get the crop off to a nice robust start,” Vaillancourt says. “It helps the plant through photosynthetic activity, but more importantly, it help these young crops flourish through early season stresses.”
Kick starting key processes
Canady shares the biostimulants and metabolites are developed in the company’s Salt Lake City lab.
“We're taking bacteria and different types of microbes that normally are associated with plants and soil and we're stressing them, we're feeding them, we're starving them, we're heating them, we're cooling them, and they give off fermentation metabolites that would normally go to the crop,” Canady says. “These are organic acids, proteins, peptides, carboxylic acids that are going to benefit the plant.”
He says this provides antioxidants that can help mitigate stress—mainly abiotic stress.
The product does not contain living organisms but rather biologically derived ingredients which are shelf stable for three years from the manufacturing date and does not require refrigeration.
Take the application to the next level.
The company reports from its trials a 2.2% boost to yields nationwide in corn. Specific to the central corn belt, its trials showed a 1.4% lift in yield.
The product can also be used in soybeans and cotton.
No change in equipment or in-field practice.
On top of its formulation and deliverables to the crop, Verdesian highlights how using the product does not require any special equipment nor a change in practice in the field. Available in 25 lb. totes and 5 gal. pails, the Seed + Graphite product can be added to the planter seed box for application direct on the seed just as is done with traditional talc and graphite products.
Application rates are:
- 8 oz per 100 lb seed in corn
- 4 oz per 100 lb seed in soybeans
How the company will expand its sales.
Seed+ Graphite product was introduced in 2019, ramped up availability in 2020, and then made widely available in 2021 for the first time.
Doug Seaman, a sales agronomist with Heritage Cooperative in Ohio reports they saw a 77% win rate, and in the areas where they didn’t have a yield advantage it was because there wasn’t crop stress. The higher the stress loads, the more return they saw in their product use on corn.
“Biologicals is a very crowded space. So we look for trusted data, multiple replications so the company can back up their claims,” Seaman says. “We’ve done trials in 2020 and 2021, and we saw better emergence, better seedling vigor, increased root formation. This is a way to get growers to mitigate early season stress as they are planting earlier and expanding their planting window to get all the work done.”
He comments on positioning the product that traditional graphite can run 5o cents to 85 cents, and Seed + Graphite retails for $3/acre, depending on seed weight.
“A 3.6 bushel average return is what we're seeing on our data, and we feel very good about the return on investment,” he says.
Previews what’s to come.
The Verdesian leaders say the technology and formulation strategy used in Seed + Graphite will be incorporated in other areas for the Verdesian product portfolio. Next to come in the lineup will be a product in the foliar application market.
