January 2020 - 19

PLANT & SOIL NUTRITION
Product offers nitrogen in short, targeted bursts
By Stephen Kloosterman
Associate Editor
At a time when growers are beginning
to apply a minimum of nitrogen, two
products from British Levity Crop Science
and OMEX Agrifluids USA are marketed to
growers to target specific stages in growth.
University California, Davis researchers
this summer published a study about
managing the application of nitrogen in
agriculture. Among the study's suggestions
are applying fertilizers more precisely and
getting nitrogen to where it's needed most.
In some agricultural markets, access to
basic NPK fertilizer is a concern, while in
others, over-application of nitrates is an
environmental concern.
" People not having access to fertilizer
to grow food is as much of a problem
as inefficient use of it, " lead author Ben
Houlton said in a press release.
Slow-release, biological and organic
fertilizers have been marketed as reducing
excess nitrogen application. Cell Power
SizeN, a Levity product distributed by
OMEX, also offers a chance to reduce the
total amount of applied nitrogen.
SizeN, developed by Levity, has seen
wide use in potatoes and is now being
marketed widely to vegetable and fruit
growers in the Pacific Northwest, Florida
and Michigan.
" As an industry, we're under an
obligation to find ways of getting more
from less, " said Mike Williams, CEO at
OMEX Agrifluids USA. " That means
finding ways to improve crop production,
increasing yield while reducing waste,
and providing opportunities to lower our
reliance on harsh chemicals. "
Levity's patented technology uses
targeted applications of stabilized amine
nitrogen to assist the plant in growing
during its current stage of growth. For
growers, this can be used to target the
specific stages of fruit or vegetable growth,
for example, to bulk up fruit.
Rock Klenk, a former Omex employee,
who has worked on his father's farm, Klenk
Orchards, now operates a greenhouse
business full-time. He said Levity products
were used on his father's cherries and
Honeycrisp apples with good results.
In the orchard's 2017 cherry season,
he remembered, the trees didn't have
much of a June drop. The trees were
almost overloaded with fruit, he said, but
fertilization helped all those cherries fill out
to a good size, called nine-row, with most
cherries at 75/64ths of an inch.
" What we saw in cherries was really
promising, " he said. " They looked really
good. We had a really good crop. "
He's also had luck using SizeN on
mums in his greenhouse, and seen some
success in using a calcium product from
Levity called LoCal to stave off bitter pit in
Honeycrisp.
" We saw really good results on bitter pit
control, " he said. " Obviously, you're not
going to control that 100%. It's hard to put a
number on it, but looking at it, it was hard
to find a Honeycrisp that had bitter pit. "
The science behind SizeN product makes
a lot of sense to him, he said. While many
growers spread dry urea or calcium nitrate,
the fertilizer in that form isn't readily
available to the plant, while SizeN is already
in an amine form.
A lower amount of nitrogen can be used
and the product has been stabilized to stay
in the soil, Klenk said.
" It won't leach in the soil, which,
environmentally, that's good, " he said.
Austin Ochoa, a fifth-generation potato
grower near Othello in Washington state's
Columbia basin, said he used SizeN on his
Russet Burbank, Clearwater Russet and
Alturas processing potatoes, making two
key applications at tuber initiation and
bulking up.
" We really liked the results and yield, "
he said. " We saw an increase in tubers per
plant and we also did see the increase in
bulking size. "
SizeN at work in a potato crop field.
Photo: OMEX
Ochoa said he had also tried some other
products with biological organisms for lownitrogen
fertilizer.
" There is some good stuff about those
(biologicals), but you don't see the same
results as SizeN, " he said.
In the three and a half years that SizeN has
been offered in the U.S., Levity Crop Science
Managing Director David Marks said, he's
been " refreshed " by growers' willingness to
try something new and different.
" They will try something they're
skeptical about, " he said. VGN
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Traverse
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Traverse produces bulbs that
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For information on these and other Clifton Seed
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or call (800) 231-9359 or (866) 342-5893 to
find a sales representative in your area.
ftil
VGN | JANUARY 2020 | 17
http://www.cliftonseed.com
January 2020

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