A real-world test of nitrogen-fixing bacteria conducted in Alberta was a bust when it came to boosting yields, but no one is throwing in the towel yet.
“It’s too early to tell. You can’t base anything off one year worth of trial data,” said Erek Bishop, a participant in one of four trials of Utrisha N and Envita last year.
Both products use naturally occurring bacteria that take nitrogen from the air and make it available to crops, a potentially huge advance in that it could boost crop quality and yield while reducing fertilizer bills (and nitrous oxide emissions).
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But none of the four Plot2Farm trials conducted by farmers with the help of the Alberta Wheat and Barley commissions produced any yield bump.
Heat stress may have been a factor on his family’s farm near Barons, said Bishop, who grew durum under irrigation. And although he didn’t see a difference in test weight, he said others have.
“Growers I deal with say they never saw any yield increases but had test weight increases,” said Bishop. “They noticed their grades went from a No. 3 or 4 durum to a No. 2 or 1 durum just due to the weight difference.
“Just based on that, it more than paid for itself.”
It was the same story in the other three Plot2Farm trials, with no significant differences in yield, test weights or protein levels. The biggest yield bump was a trial of Utrisha N on a spring wheat crop near Carstairs that yielded an extra three bushels an acre. On the other hand, the trial at Bishop Farms saw the check outyield Utrisha-N test strips by 1.4 bushels an acre and the Envita strips by 2.3 bushels.
The bottom line of the reports on all four trials was exactly the same.
“No differences were seen between treatments,” they all stated. “Therefore, the most economical treatment is the check.”
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According to company reps, the suggested retail price of Envita is $16 per acre and Utrisha N has a sticker price of $15.50 per acre. Then there’s application costs, which range from $7 to $12 per acre, said Alberta Wheat and Barley agronomist Jeremy Boychyn.
Wheat results often disappoint
Boychyn said he’s still “racking his head” about the results, but it’s too early to dismiss nitrogen-fixing bacteria products on wheat.“
It just provides a little flag for producers to look at them with a very close lens and do a good test on their farm before doing any kind of a blanket application, which I know most producers do, but it’s important after seeing these results to make sure that we do that right.”
The Plot2Farm trials aren’t the only instance in which nitrogen-fixing bacteria have produced underwhelming results in wheat.
While third-party trials have found clear yield gains in other crops, wheat has been a different story, a sales agronomist with Envita maker Azotic North America said during a presentation at a Farming Smarter virtual conference in December.
“We’re not seeing the same consistency as we are in corn and soybeans,” said Phil Bernardin.
A small plot trial in Manitoba also showed little yield advantage over untreated acres, although there was a small bump in protein, he said. However, that may have been a case of the crop having access to all the nitrogen it could use so the extra produced by the bacteria wasn’t needed.
“The nitrogen wasn’t limiting so the Envita being in the plants couldn’t really add more to yields,” said Bernardin.
However, another small plot replicated trial in Manitoba showed a small yield boost (about four bushels per acre) over the untreated control with no significant change in protein.
Still, the product has regularly delivered significant yield gains on corn, potatoes and soybeans and showed promise on canola, said Bernardin, and trials on corn conducted in the U.S. Midwest since 2019 have shown consistent yield gains.
“That’s partly because it’s really hard to over-fertilize corn,” he said. “It needs a lot of N so Envita is always able to provide that extra boost.”
Wheat is different.
“It’s a bit more nuanced for these kind of crops in terms of how much nitrogen we add and what kind of response you’re going to get. It’s not going to be as clear-cut as corn is,” he said.
His company hopes to conduct large scale demonstration trials in farmers’ fields this year to compare different nitrogen rates on wheat and canola crops under Envita, said Bernardin.
“If we were to reduce N fertility by 10, 20 or 30 per cent, we want to see what kind of impact Envita would have,” he said. “Would it give us the opportunity to reduce our fertility a little bit and either maintain our yields or even give us a bit of a yield bump?”
How they work
Both Utrisha N and Envita fall into a category called biostimulants.Corteva Agriscience Canada launched Utrisha N just over two years ago and has run plot trials across Western Canada. The foliar-applied product enters through the stomata, colonizes in the leaf and converts nitrogen from the air into ammonium.
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Corteva hasn’t posted results from last year’s trials, but those in 2021 found Utrisha N only increased per-acre wheat yield by an extra 1.1 bushels. It was a similar story for canola, but the company says the drought of 2021 skewed results.
Syngenta announced last spring that it had secured distribution rights to Envita in Canada and it will be available commercially this year. Growers can either apply it foliarly or put it in furrow to colonize the plant. By working within plant cells, the bacterium “provides nitrogen exactly where it is most needed,” the company says on its website.
In corn, Envita appears to improve yield by reducing ‘tip back’ (withering) at the end of corn ears, a condition that results in fewer and/or immature kernels, said Bernardin.
“We’re not getting bigger kernels; the thousand-kernel weights are always pretty much the same. But what we’re seeing is more kernels getting to maturity and that’s leading to higher yield.”
The bacteria also appeared to bring corn to maturity faster.
“That’s a little bit counterintuitive to how nitrogen usually behaves but our thought process is if Envita is in the plant, it’s always kind of feeding that nitrogen. There’s no kind of stall or delay in growth,” said Bernardin.
Applying Envita on potatoes produced a nearly three-tonne-per-acre increase in a southern Alberta demonstration trial, he said, adding that’s likely because spuds are an N-hungry plant, too.
“Potatoes need a lot of nitrogen and it’s kind of hard to over-fertilize them.”
A sign of interest in these products is that the biostimulant trials made up four of the 13 that the Plot2Farm program conducted in 2022.
Each trial was done under proper scientific protocols (such as randomized and repeated strips) but there were variations, such as a different variety of wheat at each farm and different fertilizer applications.
Bernardin said more research is needed to establish the best practices compatible with the product when used on spring wheat. However, lack of a yield response could have been for any number of reasons, says Boychyn.
Perhaps the bacteria didn’t fully spread through the wheat plants or somehow didn’t spread properly and so weren’t able to supply enough N to make a difference.
“Even if it infected and infected well, did it do that throughout the whole growing season?” he said. “Maybe the stress periods in August when it was drier (created a problem).”
There will be more Plot2Farm trials this year, but since it’s producers who submit the research proposals, it’s not known if more biostimulant trials will be on the menu. The application deadline is the end of February. For more info and the application form, go to albertawheatbarley.com/plot2farm.
