The Top 6 Nutrients Your Seed Needs For Early Growth

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By providing the right nutrients early on, plants can be better set to thrive in their early growth stages and withstand cold and water stress, which can be common weather conditions seen in the spring planting timeframe. These are the six key, critical nutrients needed for optimal crop establishment.

Phosphate: Critical in early stages of growth and needed to support shoot and root growth during crop establishment.
Zinc: A key nutrient for driving many metabolic reactions within a plant that is needed for it to reach optimum growth and yield potential.
Manganese: Plays a role in several metabolic reactions and has a direct connection to photosynthesis.
Nitrogen: A critical component in the building blocks of proteins and is needed for chlorophyll molecules, which enables the plant to capture sunlight by photosynthesis
Iron: Plays a large role in the metabolic reactions within the plant, and can be found in many soils, but often becomes inaccessible due to environmental and soil factors. A highly available iron source can help treat early season iron deficiency chlorosis.
Molybdenum: Required for nitrogen fixation. Adequate amounts of it can support proper nodulation development and efficient nitrogen fixation — potentially leading to larger, more vigorous seedlings.

Plant Smarter to Combat Risks

While incorporating any single nutrient from the above into your nutrient management plan can positively impact your crop, applying multiple nutrients directly to the seed can set your seedling up for even greater success. To find that right nutrient package, more growers are turning to solutions such as PROTIVATE^™ nutritional seed enhancer from Koch Agronomic Services (KAS).

Engineered with a dual purpose, PROTIVATE offers both nutrition and flowability, giving young crops the right nutrients needed at the right time for crop growth. By applying PROTIVATE directly to the seed, nutrients are available near the root zone and delivered to young crops at a time of year when nutrient access can be difficult to achieve. This is especially crucial for growers looking to plant earlier in the season in colder, wetter soils.

Three Formulations for More Flexibility

The seed nutrition portfolio from PROTIVATE offers three formulations, with each containing nutrients that support the metabolic reactions needed for a plant to reach optimal yield potential: NU4-DRI, NU5-DRI and NU5-LUX. These critical nutrients are only available to the seed through direct application on the seed, and once applied are then more readily available in the early growth stages.

NU4-DRI contains four of the above key nutrients and is ideally formulated for use on corn, wheat, soybean and other major row crops.
NU5-DRI and NU5-LUX each contain five of the top six nutrients and are ideally formulated for use on soybean, legume and other pulse crops.

The PROTIVATE formulations also support various application methods that can fit the equipment available for growers or retailers. This provides flexible, highly efficient ways to put nutrition right where the crop needs it. So no matter what you’re planting, or whether you’re applying in the planter or downstream (at the retailer), there’s a formulation fit for you.

To learn more about PROTIVATE and find out which formulation is right for your operation, visit ProtivateSeedNutrition.com or contact your local KAS sales representative.

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