Metabolites help increase plant’s defenses to ward off stressors and put energy toward growing.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Do both, and he has the freedom to grow in other areas.
Plants are the same. Improve a plant’s defenses, and a plant has more opportunities to grow. Let plants concentrate on thriving instead of defending against stressors with the help of HELM’s Crop Defense products.
Crop Defense is a category of products within HELM’s Plant Advantage portfolio that prime the plant to handle environmental stressors. By protecting itself, the plant doesn’t waste energy fighting and can put that energy into plant productivity. This gives the plant the opportunity to perform to its highest genetic potential.
Protecting potential
The moment of a crop’s highest genetic potential is when the seed touches the ground. From then on, it is the grower’s responsibility to make management decisions to bring that potential to fruition. So much of crop production is outside of a grower’s control. Stressors like temperature swings, moisture uncertainty, mechanical or chemical injury, and inefficient use of nutrients can thwart the plant’s genetic potential. Yet growers still have options.
HELM’s Plant Advantage™ products are designed to have physiological interactions within the plant to maximize plant potential and vitality through optimizing gene expression. Crop Defense products help crops to efficiently manage their yield-producing resources such as water, CO2 and plant nutrients.
What can growers do?
For those plant stressors outside human control, timely application of foliar nutrition and metabolites can help plants handle stress better. These kinds of products can help improve the efficiency of the crop’s metabolic and plant health processes to help give it a higher stress tolerance.
Using nutrigenomics, a field of research studying the close connection between plant nutrition and plant defenses, we can identify which genes can be up- or down-regulated to improve overall plant health. Plants are naturally reactive organisms. They respond to their environments. By using Crop Defense products, the plant becomes proactive in managing its response to environmental conditions.
Putting the plant to work
Crop Defense products include nutritionals, natural optimizers and foliar micronutrients. When used before the first symptoms of stress, these products help ensure the plant is primed to react quickly. Maintaining the plant’s energy processes reduces the stressor’s effect and duration. Ultimately, this helps the plant to increase its own stamina and durability.
When a plant is stressed, a crop’s chemical defense responses jump into action. These defenses can be maintained at a low level through specially targeted crop nutrition, keeping them primed for action and creating potentially stronger plant protection.
HELM’s Crop Defense products leave no synthetic residues. By using Crop Defense products to mitigate abiotic stressors and fungicides, HELM can help growers make the most of available chemical tools. Crop Defense products give your crops the best chance to reach their genetic potential.
To learn more about Plant Advantage crop defense, talk to your local HELM representative or consider taking our Crop Defense online learning module.