UC Davis researchers have been working on a platform for field testing biostimulants and have tested well over a dozen products. UC Davis Plant Sciences Professor Dr. Patrick Brown said his team was developing that platform before the COVID-19 pandemic halted progress.
Brown said it’s important to make sure any product is tested outside of a pot or greenhouse in real, in-field conditions. Terms like ‘heat-tolerant’ are relative and thresholds that make those claims can vary. Brown said a lot of these products that fall under the biological category can be expensive. It can be costly for growers to test multiple products in their own fields. Brown’s platform looked to standardize tests for biostimulants to get a baseline of performance for growers.
In this episode of the Making Sense of Biologicals program, Dr. Brown describes the platform and how he hopes to continue the work post-pandemic. He also discusses the importance of growers to trial products fairly when they can and how his recent discussion at a major conference proves the growth of the biologics sector.
Listen to the episode with Dr. Patrick Brown.
‘Making Sense of Biologicals’ is a series from AgNet West that dives into various topics with unbiased experts in the field of biologics to help the industry better understand the product category.
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