Industry Experts’ Advice On Fruit Plant Nutrition

When it comes to crop protection, it’s easy to forget how important plant nutrients can be in helping crops ward off potential problems, from voracious pests to deadly diseases. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: The best defense is a good offense. And there’s no more effective offense than a healthy, strong, vigorous plant. So for this, the third installment in our four-part series on crop protection, we talked to a couple of experts on how to ensure your crops can be as healthy as possible. Wayne Tucker is with Bio S.I. Technology, LLC, whose products help fertilizers and chemicals be more efficient and rebuild, restore, and renew the soil at the same time. Ken Dart is the national technical and marketing manager for Agro-K Corp., and their products are formulated to be quickly and rapidly used by fruit crops at peak times for optimal performance.

 

Q: What are the key attributes you look for when developing plant nutrient products for fruit crops?

Tucker: What the target fruits are. How will they help the grower produce sweeter, better tasting fruit? Make sure that the products will improve the bottom line for the grower and help rebuild the soil at the same time.

Dart: There are two things you have to look at to be successful: 1) For the product to be formulated in a way that provides quick and thorough uptake in a safe manner. It also needs to go in quickly enough in those peak demand windows. If the product doesn’t get in during that peak demand window, the grower isn’t getting the full value of the application. 2) It also needs to be mixable with insecticides, fungicides, and plant growth regulators (PGRs), to avoid separate application trips. The product is only as good as the timing the grower uses for the application. It can be a great product, but if the timing is wrong, the grower won’t receive the full value of the application.

 

Q: What are fruit growers saying is most important when it comes to plant nutrition?

Tucker: Growers want products that work. Products that help the plants maintain proper growth. Also products that will improve the quality of the fruit and not break the bank.

Dart: Most important to the progressive growers who are really trying to move ahead on quality and size of fruit is balanced nutrition, the right nutrients at the right time. The biggest issues that fruit growers have are related to calcium disorders like pear pit and poor storing soft fruit. Specific apple varieties like Honeycrisp, Braeburn, and Jonagold in particular have high calcium requirements that require carefully designed foliar nutrient programs that start with calcium applied at fruit set and continuing through the season. Many growers start too late in applying foliar calcium and don’t understand that the only time calcium goes into the cell wall of the fruit is during cell division in the fruit. They also don’t understand that applying foliar potassium during fruit cell division antagonizes calcium, which can aggravate bitter pit in apples and cork in pears. You can aggravate these calcium disorders by either not applying calcium during cell division or antagonizing it by applying foliar potassium, and I’m saying that as a potassium supplier. It’s a common mistake. The other common mistake is over-fertilizing with nitrogen, particularly foliar nitrate forms. It alters the nitrogen/calcium balance in the fruit, which makes the fruit unstorable and leads to soft fruit and bitter pit in storage.

 

Q: What types of products do you have coming down the pike for fruit growers?

Tucker: We are working on products that will help release tied-up nutrients in the soil. They are just sitting there and have already been paid for, so our products will put them in the production arena again.

Dart: We have some nutrient-based phosphites that allow the grower to use the right nutrient at the right time in a phosphite formulation that allows very rapid and complete uptake of the nutrient even through waxy cuticles into the plant quickly enough to support peak demand. The phosphite formulation allows for complete plant movement through the xylem and phloem. In particular, the calcium-based phosphite, Sysstem Cal, can be mixed with many of the most important plant growth regulators like Apogee, MaxCel, Promalin, and Sevin to supply calcium to the fruit during calcium peak demand without having to make a special application trip. A number of universities have done replicated trials with these tank mixes and seen increased performance from each of these PGRs, while at the same time increasing the calcium levels in the fruit. The university researchers have commented on the significant increase in calcium and fruit size they have seen in these trials. The research has been done by Washington State University, the University of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Idaho.

 

Q: Where do you see the future of the fruit crop nutrition category headed?

Tucker: Products will have to have several benefits to help the grower achieve better profits. They will have to work with the nutrition aspect of production and rebuilding the soil at the same time. The new regulations are favoring products that help production but do not impact the environment negatively at the same time.

Dart: I see the future of grower use of nutrients in tree fruit as being the key factor going forward for improving marketable yields, by having higher packouts of the right sized fruit that stores longer and has less shrink on the grocery store shelf and provides the best eating experience for the consumer. We can increase measurable food value in the apple, in particular calcium, which consumers, who are looking for more calcium in their diets, will benefit from.