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There are many distinct types of seed treatments, including those already on the market that prevent diseases and deter pathogens. But a fast-growing segment of biological seed treatments goes beyond protection and actively support seed germination, seedling growth and early root development. 

In the latest episode of the podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Doug Miller, vice president of MidWest Biotech, explores the common ingredients in biological seed treatments and explains their role in germination and early plant growth.

 

     
   

   

     
   

   

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Full Transcript

Welcome to another edition of the No-Till Farmer Podcast. I'm John Dobberstein, senior editor of No-Till Farmer. There are many distinct types of seed treatments, including those already on the market that prevent diseases and deter pathogens. But a fast-growing segment of biological seed treatments goes beyond protection and actively support seed germination, seedling growth, and early root development. In our latest edition brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Doug Miller, Vice President of Midwest Bio-Tech, explores the common ingredients of biological seed treatments and explains their role in germination and early plant growth. Now let's listen in on what Doug has to say about these products.

So I thought we could revisit what some of these components are, what they're intended to do. And at a time like this where dollars matter a great deal, what can you do to get the best return? What sorts of ingredients and performance should you look for? So that's really our purpose this morning is to help people sort out these options.

In terms of what we're talking about for seed treatments, there are three main or four main classes of treatments. First, we've got microbial products that again have been around for a long, long time. The oldest form are bacterial inoculants, the sort of thing you would apply to soybeans or alfalfa, other legumes to help form colonies on the roots and help the plant fix nitrogen from the air. And so people are used to those things. They've been around for a long, long time. There've been other developments in this field lately, especially fungal products that help not only with nitrogen fixation, but are intended to provide other biological benefits around the seed at germination time.

So we'll consider some important factors there. Some seed treatments are more or less nutrient based. They provide either macro or micronutrients as a part of the treatment on the seed coating. And we'll talk about what those are intended to do. And then finally, there's the class of growth promoters, plant growth hormones, amino acids, other compounds that are biological in nature and are intended to encourage germination and early root growth.

And so typically what you see, and when I refer to biological seed treatments in the title today, is sort of a combination of that last three set of classes. Some treatments will include nutrients, some will include growth promoters, some will include microbial packages, different combinations. That's where it gets a little bit complicated in trying to choose a particular product for your situation because everybody's got a different combination of these different classes. And so my purpose today, again, first of all, is to talk a little bit about what these things are intended to do, what help they're supposed to provide, and what you should look for when you compare different products.

So if we begin with the micronutrient group, micronutrients first and foremost in seed germination and early plant development are there to help form enzymes. The enzymes in our bodies, in livestock, in plants, and the micronutrients are called cofactors, which means they're sort of like a key. They have to be present in order to form the enzyme and their presence is all that's required. More is not really better than less, as long as a particular micronutrient's there, then the associated enzyme can be formed. And having a deficiency of a particular micronutrient's kind of like losing your keys to your truck, things are going to slow down when getting started. And so again, to follow the key analogy, you don't need two or three or four keys to start your truck typically, you just need that one. So it's just the presence of that cofactor to help form a particular enzyme.

So if it's missing, germination and early growth will slow. If it's there and it's present, that's all that's needed. More is not better than less. And in fact, in many of these cases, you can overdose on a particular micronutrient and that will hamper germination. So it's really just the presence of these things that's required. And that's why a lot of seed treatments will include some micronutrient package to make sure that you have an ample amount present around that seed to help with germination by forming the critical enzymes. Each micronutrient serves many roles in plant growth throughout the season, but we'll talk about those that are most important for germination.

Cobalt manganese and molybdenum are most important for nitrogen metabolism and fixation in legumes. Molybdenum also helps with using nitrates in non-legumes like corn or other grass plants. So some of them serve in nutrient availability roles when that seedling is just getting started. And so that's their purpose.

Many of them serve dual roles. So like magnesium is also involved in nitrogen pickup, but is also important for cell wall strength, which is important for seedlings that you're trying to get to grow and emerge through a potentially crusty soil. And so cell wall strength is important for that early seedling. You also want to push roots down through the soil, and that takes cell wall strength. So magnesium's important in addition to its role in firing up those enzymes. Boron and calcium are also important for cell wall structure.

And then finally, we've got a group of three micronutrients that serve other rules. Iron, we typically think about in terms of later season activities around photosynthesis. Iron's critical for photosynthesis, but it also serves a role in germination and early seedling development by regulating plant growth hormones, and we'll talk about those in a moment.

And also energy conversion, converting carbon-based forms of energy into sugars and then metabolizing the sugars into other compounds. Sulfur's important for protein formation and energy storage within the early growing seedling. And then we hear a lot of seed treatments that include zinc. That's important for nitrogen processing as well as early root growth and helping that plant to handle any stresses, dry, cool, cold, wet, and anything else that might be stressing that seedling early in the season, studies have shown zinc to help.

So the key thing is that there are lots of these micronutrients that are important. And for early germination seedling development, they're really more important than the macronutrients, N, P and K. And so you'll see some seed treatments that contain nitrogen or phosphorus or potassium. Usually those sources are adequate within the seed itself for early start. It's when the seedling gets up and started beyond that early phase that you start to have need for those macronutrients, and that's where your fertility sources come in, starter fertilizer or other things like that can be helpful.

But usually as a seed treatment, the macronutrients are not quite as important as the micros. And again, we can use the key analogy to say, "Hey, they're really essential. They get this process started." And the sooner you can start each one of those enzyme processes, the faster you go through the germination stages and get the seedling emerged, get the root system established and growing downward and getting nutrients into that plant from soil sources and the fertility you've applied. So that's their purpose.

In terms of plant growth hormones, there are several that are involved. The two most important for germination are cystic acid and the gibberellins, which sort of counteract one another. Abscisic acid's purpose in life is to keep those seeds dormant when conditions are not suitable for the germination. And so if you've got a dry soil or it's too cool or the seed hasn't absorbed enough moisture yet, abscisic acid is what protects that seed from starting germination too early. And then on the other hand, gibberellins promote germination. So once things fire up and you've got enough moisture and you've got enough temperature and conditions are right, then gibberellins take over and those hormones guide the plant into the early stages of germination.

Auxin and cytokinins are other plant growth hormones. Their main role in germination is to encourage cell division. So if you think about that seed and how it grows initially, shooting both the seedling up through the surface and sending roots downward, there are lots and lots of cells that have to be created by dividing one cell into two, and then that happens many, many, many times. And if that can occur quickly and those cells develop as they should, then those plant growth hormones are doing their job. They're helping that plant seedling to grow quickly, early in its life.

The interesting thing is that general soil health will help with this process because we found after much research that soil bacteria produce plant growth hormones as sort of a secondary set of outputs. We talk about all the things that soil bacteria can do for plants in terms of mineralizing nutrients and converting things over to forms that can be transmitted to the roots, but as in sort of a secondary benefit, soil bacteria produce these compounds as well. So general soil health around the seed is important and can contribute to early benefits for germination purposes as well.

Some seed treatments will include other biological compounds, amino acids we were told in basic science classes are the building blocks of proteins and proteins are needed to form cells and do all sorts of other great things in growing plants. And so that makes sense. It sounds a little weird to give your plants B vitamins, but there are some seed treatments that will include B-complex vitamins because they are also involved in early germination.

In particular, they also promote enzyme formation. So they don't serve the critical cofactor role that a micronutrient does, but they are helpful. And so some seed treatments will include things like B-complex vitamins as well. And so typically the labels on seed treatments will contain the nutrient list through a guaranteed analysis, just like you'd have on a fertilizer product. And the reason for that is the states regulate seed treatments typically as if they're fertilizer. And that's because they have nutrients and most states are set up to regulate fertilizers and have been for decades. So since there's nutrient content in these products, they often label them and register them as a fertility product because of their micronutrient content.

There typically are not requirements for things like amino acids or vitamins or plant growth hormones. Some labels will include them, others will not. They become sort of the secret sauce that somebody has in a proprietary formulation, and so they may hint at it or tell you about it, but usually they're not going to provide a great deal of detail like percentages or lists of exact content. One, because they're not required by state labeling requirements. And two, it is sort of the proprietary difference that some products have, what at least the producers believe is the difference between their product and many others. So some of these things you'll see on labels and others, you won't. And so it's important to ask questions.

Welcome back to the episode in a moment, but first I'd like to thank our podcast sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. Looking for innovative solutions to maximize your farm's productivity, look no further than Yetter farm equipment. We're dedicated to providing farmers with the highest quality equipment, from row cleaners and closing wheels to fertilizer management, strip-till units, and stalk devastators, Yetter has the tools you need to optimize your farming operation. Visit yetterco.com to learn more and find a dealer near you.

At this time, I thought we'd go through some of the questions you might want to be asking about these different components when talking to seed dealers or talking to biological folks like myself or other retailers who are trying to help you make up your mind. In the case of microbials, inoculants, whether they're bacteria or fungal species, some of these other products that either contain live bacteria or live fungus or spores that are reactivated or regenerated in the presence of water and adequate heat.

The key thing is shelf life. How long are they going to last? If you bought an inoculant based treatment for your soybeans and you were planting in April and then you got to do replants in early June, has that product lasted the two months or do you have to replace it with fresh product? What is the shelf life on these products?

Because especially with live microbe content, they usually have some nutrition, some support mechanism provided in the product, at least the good ones do, but that's finite. It's not going to last forever. And so you should ask about what's the shelf life. If I'm using this in April, how late can I do replants and use the same product? What about exposure to other seed treatments? If you're putting a microbial product on something that's got an insecticide or a fungicide on it, does that chemical product hamper the performance of the microbial content? Is it going to kill your bacteria or fungus by exposure?

Some biological seed treatments have to be applied away from the seed, and so they're deposited in furrow along with the seed, but not applied directly with it to avoid that sort of exposure that might hamper their life. They always say that if you buy microbial based products for human use in a pharmacy or elsewhere, that half the microbes in the jar will die sitting on the shelf and the other half will die as they go through your digestive tract on the way to your gut where they're intended to go to work.

And I've heard people say that similar things happen with microbial treatments, that some will expire in the containers, some will be expired due to exposure to other chemicals and things on their way to going to work in the soil. They still work. We don't sell them, but we've seen them work. We have customers that routinely use soybean inoculants. Some will do so every year, some will do so under certain situations. We've tended to find them working best in situations where you've had some disturbance to your, especially bacterial or fungal populations.

If you've done earth clearing, you've had excessive compaction, flooding, things like that that are going to hamper your native microbial species and you can give them a boost. But the downside is that if your native guys are being hampered by their environment, then the new guys are going to go into the same environment and might not perform any better. So that's just a consideration.

For example, we often get reports from people about how their microbial treatments have been working, and we do testing with them ourselves, and they tend not to work as well in cool, wet planting conditions. So a couple years ago, at least in our area, we had a nice start to April, and people that planted early got along fine, but if they waited till late April, early May, soils got wet and cool, and we heard reports that their microbial seed treatments didn't perform quite as well. So they are susceptible to condition, just like all the other parts of the biology we're talking about.

Last consideration is sensitivity to light or temperature. Some of them have a range in which they can be stored. They either can't be frozen, they can't get too hot, they can't be exposed to direct sunlight. So those are important considerations in just how you handle and store the products themselves, make sure that they remain in good condition so they're going to work as they're intended.

Nutrient-based seed treatments, as I noted, macronutrients are really less important than the micros for seed germination. They're critically important for the entire rest of the season and even early stages of seedling growth. But just for germination and things, I'd pay more attention to micronutrient content on the label. And the key thing is since they're required to be present for the formation of many different enzymes and that whole germination and early root growth and seedling growth process, it's really better to have more micronutrients in a package than less.

Somebody showed me a label the other day and it had three micronutrients. Some of these treatments include many more and the idea is if they're there to support germination and a different key is required for each different part of the process, it's better to have more keys and more different keys. So more different micronutrients is better. I'd pay attention to which ones. Some of the less expensive products will include the cheaper micronutrients and not include those that are a little bit more expensive so they can help with cost of the product and improve margins, but really in general, more is better than less, but the amount of each one is not as critical. So farmers are used to comparing fertilizer products based on their guaranteed analysis, and usually more is better than less, but when it comes to seed treatments, it really comes down to the presence of the micronutrient rather than whether it's 2% calcium or 1.5% calcium or comparing that.

We're used to thinking more is better than less, and that's generally true for fertility products, but here you just need the presence. And so two seed treatments that have slightly different guaranteed analysis for a particular micronutrient is not quite as important as just the presence of that micronutrient. You don't need 12 keys to start your truck, you just need one. So as long as there's some amount of that micronutrient present, that's really the critical factor for comparing. And I would say that a treatment that's got more different micronutrients is more important than the actual amount of those nutrients.

The only place where you might start to consider things like the carrier that's involved, some will use talcs, some use graphite combination. There are other compounds that have been developed as carriers for dry treatments. You want to make sure each seedling or each seed is exposed to those biological ingredients. So it's important, one, that the carrier adheres to the seed coat.

So there are real downsides to talc, but one of the benefits is it adheres tightly to other things. If you've ever gotten some on a glove or your hand and you try rubbing it off, it's difficult and that's because of its physical characteristics. The edges of those molecules have really tight bonding capabilities, but it's also slick because the different sheets of the talc have low bonding characteristic with themselves and so they'll slide. And that's what makes talc sort of feel very slick and almost oily. But the grade of talc matters. There are different grades and coarser talcs don't adhere as well because it's got fewer surface area components for bonding. And if it gets real coarse and hasn't been properly ground and screened, you might find chunks or pieces of solid components in your treatment. And that does nasty things to seed meters and some of the other finer components in your planter that you don't want to do.

So I would inspect material and if somebody can offer you a sample, I would do so, see how fine the carrier is. Do you see any separation of materials in the container itself or in the seed hopper as you're using it? And if you do, that probably means that not all your seeds are getting treated with all of those wonderful things that are going to help give you that bang for the buck.

Liquid seed treatments, again, if they've got a micronutrient content, those are typically in suspension in liquids. It depends on what chemistry they've used for suspension. All of them will settle out over time. You just want to make sure that you're using something that doesn't settle too fast. So you got to keep agitating that material while you're trying to fill planters and get work done. And if you can see definite lines of different components so that you separate materials in a liquid container, then that's going to be even more troublesome. So I would inspect the material, ask for a sample and see if you see any sorts of trouble that you might encounter based on the very nature of its physical characteristics.

Growth promoters, again, they're often included as the secret sauce. They may tell you that they're there. They may not be very specific about the label if they're trying to keep a proprietary formula to themselves, so ask questions. They aren't always included on the label, but it's important to know if those extra components are there. Based on our experience, all the testing we've done, we've tested micronutrient only treatments against those that include other materials, especially plant growth hormones.

And what we found is that you tend to get a bigger boost from the growth promoters than you do just the micronutrients. Micronutrients help. You typically see a yield increase, but it's these other components that often carry more of the weight in terms of getting a yield response from a treatment. And so I would say that if somebody claims to have these components, that's good. I'd just ask a few questions about what's in it and what they're intended to do.

And so hopefully this helps people sort out the differences between the different products, what's on the market. And again, some will include only micronutrients, some will include micronutrients and microbials, some will include the full range, and it's important to understand what's in it and to make sure that it's in a convenient form that's going to work for you when you're trying to get a planter through the field.

Bottom line, to get your best bang for the buck, check the ingredient list, ask if needed more different micronutrients or better than fewer micronutrients, and the concentration of those micronutrients is not as important because they only have to be present. Again, you only need one key to start the truck, you don't need 12. So little differences in the guaranteed analysis are not as important as the number of nutrients listed in the guaranteed analysis.

I would vote in favor of using products that include those growth promoters because we tend to see a little bit more yield response there. You're going to get a little bit more bang. And then, whether it's microbials or other things, think about compatibility issues with other products you're applying to the seed in the furrow. And if you're uncertain, ask questions, "Hey, are these two things going to be compatible, yes or no?" We've seen cases in the last few years where people have applied microbial treatments and they were not warned against things that would hamper those. And so they came back and said, "Well, my microbial treatment didn't work. Why?" Well, gee, you applied this other insecticide or fungicide or something with it, or you kept it too long on the shelf, gee, you shouldn't have let it freeze, that sort of thing. And so it's important to ask questions about how should I store this? When should I use it? And should I keep it away from other chemicals?

That said, I do think there are some extra considerations beyond what you normally have to worry about at planting time and farming, but they can provide a pretty nice boost. And in fact, at least among our products, they provide the best return dollar for dollar relative to our other products. Part of that is due to the fact that some other biological products, especially those intended for soil health, will have longer term benefits. They build up over a two, three, four year period. So on a one year return on investment, you're not seeing the full benefit that first year.

But with a seed treatment, you should see that full benefit the first year, and because that's the only time it's going to be used is on that particular crop in one season. And so there's typically no additional benefit to be gained beyond the season. So it tends to have a higher return per dollar, the return on investment's higher than some other products that have longer legs and you have a longer return window.

We'll take a few questions that have come in here. I want to lead off with one to ask, what things do you need to know about your soils when you're evaluating seed treatment products that you've described? What's good to know ahead of time as you're looking at them?

Most of the seed treatments will work pretty well on a wide range of soils. It is important to recognize that different soils will perform different year to year, and we all know that based on what we've learned from the information that you all put out, and different soil types will perform differently. Typically, what we find is that these seed treatments will work well, especially in more challenged soils like sands, where water holding capacity is limited, and it's helpful to have some deeper root systems to pull nutrient content.

Clays are a challenge not only because they tend to be a little bit more compacted, but tend to stay cooler and wetter, especially early in the season. And that's two areas where we've seen people make some real gains. Either they've got light soils or they've got heavier soils that it can be a challenge.

And one place we've seen is people that are doing a no-till transition. In the work that Lester's produced over the years, you always talk about the transition to no-till being a four or five-year process to get your soils up to speed, boost that biological activity, build organic matter and things like that. There is a definite learning curve to it. And these treatments can help overcome some of those challenges in the early years of a no-till transition.

If your soil test results show micros being in the high to very high range, will you see any real benefit from seed treatment micros? What are your thoughts on that, Doug?

You'll probably see somewhat less benefit. If everything's working great in the soil, again, you won't probably see much benefit to any of these compounds. Your soil bacteria are producing plant growth hormones, the seeds themselves are, you've got micronutrients available in the soil profile already. It's basically, at that point, kind of insurance to make sure, "Hey, I just hit a cool stretch and I just planted. So I may not have availability that I would normally rely on." So micronutrients are mineralized by bacterial activity just like everything else. It's kind of an insurance policy at that point.

So even if you've got high micro levels in a soil test, they can help prevent temporary problems that you might run into. And again, micro levels across fields can vary, again, depending on soil type and things like that. So that's really not the most expensive part of the package. So people talk about adding things as kind of an insurance policy.That's one area where I think that explanation helps is let's just make sure we've got enough. We're not adding a lot. It's not terribly expensive, but we'll make sure enough is there to turn on all those keys.

How long before planting can the liquid seed treat be put on the seed?

Couple weeks. So again, some people think, "Well, geez, I'm putting this on there. It's going to germinate in the bag." Well, no, it's going to still need some other things. And that's a good practical question too. So we get that one a lot, but we've had... In fact, when we were farming, we had our own liquid seed treater. That was one of my jobs each late in the winter was to run the seed through and treat it and re-bag it, back when we were using bags. And so we would do that two or three weeks in advance. And so it can be on the seed for quite a while.

We've also had cases where people, you get a heavy rain and you're planting in the middle of an afternoon and you got to quit, and maybe it's another week before you get back out there. Well, you've got treated seed in the hopper or treated seed in a tender or someplace else. It's going to be just fine. The only case I would say would be the microbial class would have issues, but the other classes would not with early treatment.

Okay, good. Bruce asked, what is the cost per acre of seed treatment? Is there any kind of range you can share that people would expect?

The cost per acres I showed, we tell people it's about a dollar, $20, 25 on corn. It's about 3 to 3.50 on beans. Again, it depends on your planted population, and roughly $5 in the small grain area. I think we're a little bit on the lower side. Typically, where the prices get expensive is if they're applying particular microbials that have tech fees or licensing behind them. So you're dealing with a particular intellectual property where somebody has isolated a microbe and those can pay if you have particular need for those particular microbials. But I would say usually most seed treatments are going to be in the $5 or less per acre range.

Right. Good. Next question. Do you see where high applications of phosphate could be a negative to the survivability of the biology when placed on the seed or as an in-furrow?

Yeah. As I mentioned early on in the presentation, John, even with the micronutrients, you can get too much. I've seen studies that show that not only phosphates, but nitrogen in high concentration can hamper germination, too much molybdenum, too much copper. In fact, most of these seed treatments include relatively low shares or analysis for these. And if you're adding extra, especially nitrogen or phosphates, that can hamper germination. That's why a lot of people go two by two on their macronutrient placement. They'll do a little bit in furrow, not enough to harm germination, but you can get too much.

Good. Thank you. Another question, do you see a benefit to impregnating these products to dry fertilizer or to your dry pelletized dairy manure fertilizer product?

You can do that, and we've had people do it. The short answer to that is if you're doing so, then you're treating the seed and all the area between. And so you're going to use a lot more of the biological compounds than you would if you just treated the seed. So benefit of that is it's convenient and it should work because impregnating those or embedding those on those fertilizer products shouldn't harm them, but you're going to end up putting on more biological than you need. We get the same question about our liquid. "Hey, can I just dribble liquid seed treatment in the seed furrow while I'm applying other things?" And the short answer is yes, it's going to work, but you're going to use about five times more product than you want to or could. That's your decision to make if you want that convenience and to pay a little bit more.

Right. Another question here, what is the actual process of applying the dry product when you have a wagon-load of soybean seed? Do you mix it in the wagon, add it to the planter hopper on top, et cetera?

It depends on your planting equipment and on how you're carrying the beans. If you're using it on a wagon, so you've got a gravity wagon or something with an auger to fill the hoppers, I would say typically easiest to put it on in the hopper. We provide our customers free of charge with a steel drill. It was originally designed to plant tulip bulbs, but it's steel, it's smooth, it's three inches in diameter, nine inches long. You put it on battery drill. And if you operate it at low RPM, it's not going to crack seed coats, but it'll mix any powdered seed treatment pretty fast. And so you can just go box to box pretty quickly and get those things mixed in.

On most commercial seed tenders anymore, they have talc applicators that have a screw auger and it meters out talc or other dry products, including ours, as it goes up the conveyor into the hopper. So that's a very convenient way to do it. It just takes a little calibration to get that to work. And then we've got some people that will just fill hoppers and top it off. I got a customer in Pennsylvania that says, "I've got enough rocks in my field. I'll bounce it in my planter enough that it'll filter down through and I don't have to mix it." So again, it kind of depends on your situation, but there's multiple ways.

Next question we had was how do soil CECs influence these results? And I'm assuming he's talking about the yield results that you were sharing with everyone.

Yeah. High CEC soils are a challenge because it's harder to get rooting depth because the soils are just naturally tight due to the bonding among the basically clay particles that hold moisture. And so they're a challenge for developing rooting depth. We've had good success in improving rooting depth and yields on high CEC soils because if you can encourage cell division and you provide the nutrition to help build stronger cell walls, you can punch through even tight soils. You're not going to have a great root system, but it'll be improved to the point where you can get more water and nutrients flowing into that plant. So we've had some success with that.

Well, that's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast. We'd like to thank Doug Miller from Midwest Bio-Tech for this enlightening discussion about choosing and managing biological seed treatments for successful results. We also want to thank our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment, for helping to make this podcast possible. A transcript of this episode in our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at notillfarmer.com/podcasts. For Doug and our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm John Dobberstein. Thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.