Crops need three main things to thrive: sunlight for photosynthesis and chlorophyll production, water to help with nutrient absorption and transpiration, and the nutrients themselves. While soil naturally contains nutrients, they're often unavailable in sufficient quantities, so they need to be added.
Nitrogen, phosphate and potassium are fundamental to crop health, influencing leaves, stalks, stems and roots. When soil nutrients are deficient or unavailable for plant uptake, supplemental fertilizer or microbial inputs (inoculants) should be considered.
Bionutrition inoculants play a crucial role in making these nutrients more accessible to plants and improving the efficiency of fertilizers. A range of microbial products assist crops in three important ways:
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Converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form that legume crops can use to meet most of their nitrogen requirements.
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Unlocks both soil and inorganic bound nutrients to enhance plant uptake and utilization.
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Increases crop root growth which leads to an improvement in root zone nutrient acquisition and water-use efficiency.
These beneficial microbes improve nutrient uptake, helping crops emerge earlier, grow stronger roots, and ultimately deliver higher yields.
Nitrogen fixing rhizobia inoculant performance depends on two key factors:
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Infectiveness – how well a rhizobia strain forms nodules with its host crop. Top strains are selected for their ability to outcompete others, survive in soil, and quickly infect legume cultivars. LCO (lipochitooligosaccharide) technology helps trigger nodulation earlier, enhancing plant performance.
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Effectiveness – the ability of a rhizobia strain to fix nitrogen efficiently.
Biologicals by FMC field-tests strains for nitrogen-fixing reliability. The strains are able to infect the plant but also able to fix nitrogen in the most efficient way for the plant. The strains have been proven in cool soil, boosting nodulation and maximizing yield potential as conditions shift.