CropShock has a range of causal factors agriculture. While crop shock through transplanting, vehicle movement, incorrect dosage of fertilizer and the use of certain pesticides can be managed with improved education, it’s the unpredictable negative crop effects from our application program that is the most difficult to manage.
CropShock from pesticide use is most commonly expressed as phytotoxicity that is visually seen in the crop in some form. We often fall into the trap of assuming that it is the chemical that may have caused a CropShock event. Our spraying operation is more complex than that and a full spray program of pre-emergence, post-emergence, fungicides, insecticides and nutrients needs to be assessed not only with active ingredients but also including formulations, solvents, wetters, adjuvants, water complex and biocompatibility of products.
For example, the leaf wax cuticle naturally repels water ensuring little or no contact with the leaf surface. This is solved with the use of surfactants that lower the surface tension forcing cuticular contact with water improving plant uptake of products applied. However, from the plant’s perspective this process is unnatural and even foreign. This lowering of the surface tension is primarily achieved with petroleum-derived surfactants that interact with the plant cuticle.
The South Australia and Victorian Business Manager for Agspec, Phil Lintern, has been studying the impact of application factors on CropShock, including the increasing severity of environmental factors and believes that the application of RapiSol® could be as successful as BlueSpear® foliar fertiliser range from Agspec.
“The main benefits observed in our clients’ crops, who have previously experienced CropShock and then applied RapiSol or BlueSpear, are that they have the ability to boost recovery and growth,” Phil said. “They can also be tank mixed with commonly used crop protection chemicals”. Crop growth ofter a spray application can be affected for a week or longer. With the use of BlueSpear or RapiSol in the tank recovery can occur almost immediately.
For Agspec, we can now partner with our farmer clients to combat CropShock in overcoming the adversity of spray application and unpredictable weather by providing products that improve the overall health and strength of their clients crops.
“When I came into this industry it was about maximizing growth during seasonal sunshine and rain. Now we are working side by side with our clients to develop products that safely allow their produce to become stronger all year round and survive increasingly frequent spray out of season weather events,” Mr Lintern said.
Agspec is supported by our own in-house teams across many Asia-Pacific countries, along with the extensive research programs undertaken each year to develop new fertilizers and crop protection products. The on-the-ground understanding, local knowledge and relationships are ensuring that the products for the present and the future are based on solving the problems of the present developing solutions for the future.