Biostimulants – the best solution for your yields and the environment!

Biostimulants are fantastic resources that can help farmers tackle the challenges they currently face in arable farming.

It is no secret that restrictions on the use of fertilizers and plant protection products are steadily growing as a result of the Fertilizing Products Regulation, the “Green Deal”, “Farm to Fork Strategy” and consumer requirements. The increasing occurrence of extreme weather events is also an issue that farmers are having to deal with.

Biostimulants are an important building block that can help farmers to work in a more environmentally-friendly, profitable and future-proof way. But how exactly can biostimulants help farmers? And how are they used? We sat down for a chat with product manager Sebastian Büning to find out more.

What are biostimulants and how are they defined?

According to the European Biostimulant Industry Council, biostimulants contain substances or microorganisms that can be applied to crops or the rhizosphere. The aim of these products is to stimulate the natural processes that encourage nutrient intake and efficiency, to boost crops’ tolerance to abiotic stress and to improve the quality of the crops.

Biostimulants have a positive impact on crops. However, they do not work according to the dose effect principle, like with plant protection products, or through the product’s nutrient content, like with fertilizers. Biostimulants represent a separate, third category.

What biostimulants do Schaumann have in their portfolio?

We currently offer two biostimulants: boncrop flow, a liquid biostimulant, and boncrop solid, a granular biostimulant.

When would you recommend using boncrop flow?

boncrop flow significantly increases the stress tolerance of crops. This is particularly important during heatwaves, periods of drought and extreme cold and when the crops are exposed to anything else that “forces” them to react to external circumstances. boncrop flow also strongly stimulates root growth and increases the proportion of fine roots. This in turn results in a marked increase in nutrient and water intake. Thanks to this improvement in metabolism and increase in the photosynthesis rate, the crops have enough energy to make maximum use of their potential.

boncrop flow can be combined with all standard plant protection measures. It should be applied to growing crops and can be used on almost all types of crops.

How about boncrop solid?

Now boncrop solid is a granular biostimulant that is primarily used in maize cultivation as a replacement for standard under-root fertilization. It is the ideal partner for farm fertilizers.

With this product, the focus is on improving the development of young crops, increasing root growth and boosting tolerance to abiotic stress. Thanks to the boron and zinc that the biostimulant contains, the soil does not need an additional fertilization with farm manure to ensure high and good quality yields. Here it is also important to make sure that the fertilizer balance is not affected any further, particularly in “red and yellow areas”, as boncrop solid does not contain any phosphorous or nitrogen.

You said that boncrop flow can be used on almost any crop?

Yes, that’s right. With common arable crops like maize, cereals, rapeseed, potato, sugar beets and soya, we have been able to collect some outstanding results regarding the effects of boncrop flow over the past few years. The way that it works is similar across all crops. But the effects are incredibly different.

With maize, for example, we observed fuller cobs and fewer rolled leaves during periods of drought. With potatoes, we were able to obtain a higher number of marketable goods and higher yields. With rapeseed, we were able to prevent premature pod shatter. Overall, we saw higher yields and better-quality goods on average across all crops.

Why should farmers use boncrop solid?

As I mentioned earlier, the main purpose of boncrop solid is to compensate for fertilizer restrictions so that farmers can continue to harvest secure yields. If boncrop solid is applied during sowing, it has a direct influence on the young crops as soon as they emerge. Root growth and nutrient intake are increased. The crops’ reaction to abiotic stress is improved which comes in handy at the beginning of their life cycle when cold poses more of a problem than heat.

If the soil is well supplied and farm fertilizers are used, boncrop solid is the perfect complementary product to help farmers get more positive effects than they would get when using only conventional under-root fertilization. And it does so without having any impact on the fertilizer balance.

Do you need special quipment to apply boncrop?

No, boncrop solid can be applied with standard under-root equipment and in theory can also be spread with a fertilizer spreader.

While boncrop flow can be applied with any standard plant protection product sprayer.

What does boncrop contain?

Our starting material is Ascophyllum nodosum, brown algae or “knotted kelp”, that we carefully and sustainably harvest from the coastlines of the North Atlantic. We have developed a special process that gently breaks down the algae and allows us to preserve all the contents and make them available for the crops.

boncrop flow also contains additional plant amino acids and humic acids that help to increase stress tolerance even further. In addition to other content and carrier substances, boncrop solid also contains sufficient quantities of boron and zinc.

We even work with our very own strain of Trichoderma fungus. The fungus has a high synergetic effect with the algae and a very positive impact on root growth.

Why should we work with biostimulants?

Your question should be: Why shouldn’t we work with biostimulants?

There are a lot of products on the market with the same or similar effects. It can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. In my opinion, this is one of the most legitimate reasons for the skepticism surrounding biostimulants. boncrop is obviously the exception here. We optimized our breakdown process several years ago and similar products have been used in specialized crop cultivation for a while now.

The market has undergone a transformation over the last few years and the search for new solutions in the agricultural sector is bigger than ever before. This is what pushed us to start extensively testing and optimizing our biostimulants in arable farming several years ago, resulting in us introducing boncrop to the market now. We take care of research, development and production so that we can be there as a consistent and reliable partner for our farmers.

Anyone that is familiar with Schaumann knows that we always strive to meet the high-quality requirements that both we and our customers place on our products. This is why we only share our products with our customers when we are sure that they are perfect. And this is what we did with boncrop too! That is what we are all about.

How exactly do you do this?

Over the past few years, we have carried out many practical demonstrations across Germany to see just how well our products work for ourselves. In addition, certified testing bodies carried out the exact tests we needed to register the products at the same time. We were very happy with the results.

That sounds really promising!

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Sebastian.