India Developing Healthier Rice

Breeders Developing New Rice Varieties

I found this story online where India is developing new strains of high yield rice in an effort to feed their growing population, and in some cases stave off starvation.

Uptake of Micro Nutrients Is Key

In particular, they've observed that significant malnutrition can result from a lack of the micronutrients zinc and iron.  Both carry out important processes in the human body, and the typical rice being raised in India doesn't have much of either.

Cooperative Effort Underway

They are attempting to increase the uptake in the rice plant and thusly increase the bio-availability of these vital micro-nutrients when the final grain is consumed.

The project is being carried out by a cooperation between Indian Rice Institute, HarvestPlus, and UC Davis.

The Economic Backstory

I guess I understand the economic impetus behind wanting to do this, and in general i support it.  I suppose it's not economically realistic to expect that the peasants who are suffering the most would be able to access other plants that already naturally provide these nutrients in abundance.

Treating Your Corn Seed

Seed Treating

Growers have been treating soybeans with inoculants for a long time. In this video, the Hefty brothers talk about the recent popularity of soybean seed treatments.

Treating Your Corn

But, it's only recently that treating corn seed after it has been "pre-treated" with fungicides from your dealer for enhanced germination and growth has grown in popularity.  Here is a video that explains the recent growing popularity of corn seed treatments like quickroots:

Boosting Yield 

I you are looking to boost your yields in a high yield corn production environment, the treating your seed is an easy early season test that can not only show you a visual response, in addition to a yield response at the end the of the season

Testing Different Seed Treatments

One of the reasons that seed treatments are gaining popularity is the ease with which a grower can do a side-by-side trial in their own production system.  It's relatively easy to split their planter boxes and put treated seed in half of the planter and untreated in the other, leave all the other inputs identical and get a pretty good "check" or control plot with which to test yield responses and ROIs for a given product.  Here setting up a check plot with amplify-d from Conklin is discussed

Test Them on Your Farm

While we've seen positive yield responses in many of our trials, we encourage all growers to spend a little bit of money and do some trials on their own farm in order to gain confidence that they will be able to get returns on their investment of time and money which would justify seed treatments as an ongoing part of their cropping systems.

Invigor8 Seed Treatments

Invigor8 Seed Treatments

I get a lot of questions everyday about how to treat corn seed with invigor 8 seed treatment by Genesis Ag.

What's Invigor 8?

Invigor 8 is a nutritional supplement, if you will, for young plants.  It's NPK ratio is 0-37-37.  But, the macro nutrients are designed in such a way that it won't burn the seed (or seedling) and rather than harm germination, it actually enhances germination! 

Because it's so gentle, it can be applied directly to, and absorbed into the seed in a matter of seconds.  After application the seed will be dry to the touch.

Why Should I Treat My Seed With Invigor8?

Invigor 8 seed treatment has been used in the last three highest yields in the US, in 2013, 2014 and 2015.  And, all three yield results were new world records!  Invigor 8 ensures that your corn comes out of the ground early, energized, and uniform.  The picture here was taken of corn seed treated with invigor 8 versus a control seed that had been planted for 96 hours in Oklahoma in 2015.

How Do I Apply It To The Seed?

Genesis Ag recommends that you get your seed treated in a commercial seed treater.  However, they also realize that not everyone has a seed dealer willing or able to treat their seed for them, and very few growers have their own treater that isn't already being utilized for soybeans, and are reluctant to run corn through it.

Short of having a commercial drum treater, other options are box to box treater set-ups, seed tender treaters, and in a pinch treating some seed on farm, 1 unit (1 bag) at a time using a hobby cement mixer.

I've included a short video of what's involved with treating your seed with invigor8 below:

Can I Treat My Corn With Invigor 8 After It's Already Been Treated With Fungicides?

Most seed, by the time it arrives on farm, has already been commercially treated with fungicides or other treatments.  Genesis Ag reports that treating with invigor8 over the top of seed previously treated will still get the same germination and uniform emergence benefits of seed treated "naked".