Irish Gold

CropStrengthen: In an EU project called ‘CropStrengthen, SuperFifty Prime, an organically certified natural product, was found to confer tolerance to oxidative stress (www.uni-potsdam.de/cropstrengthen/overview.html). These results were recently published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and researchers concluded that “Collectively, our data reveal that treatment of plants with SuperFifty Prime prior to a stress may be employed as a climate-smart strategy to alleviate oxidative stress-induced damages in crops.”

Extreme Weather and Abiotic Stresses: Drought, heat, cold and water logging are collectively termed by scientists as “abiotic stresses”. All crops can handle a certain level of abiotic stress. In extreme cases they cannot cope and instead respond by producing high levels of harmful compounds such as Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). This harmful accumulation of ROS is referred to as “oxidative stress” and causes damage to cellular components, including their proteins and DNA. Severe oxidative stress can result in the death of the plant and crop failure.

Superior Tolerance to Stress: SuperFifty Prime inhibits oxidative stress through a mechanism known as “molecular priming” which induces cellular defence mechanisms in the plant. BioAtlantis is launching this product globally and recommends that SuperFifty”Prime be applied to crops as a foliar spray 3 to 5 days prior to a forecasted extreme weather event, thereby priming and protecting the plant from oxidative stress for 7 to 10 days thereafter. All plants below were exposed to an inducer of oxidative stress. The plants on the right were pre-treated with SuperFifty* Prime, which provided full protection. Plants not treated with SuperFifty® Prime(left panel) suffered from oxidative stress, as can be seen by the presence of yellowing and lesions.

Increased Crop Yield: The SuperFifty Prime technology has broader implications. Even in well managed agricultural production systems, crops rarely reach their genetic growth potential and typically only reach 70-75% of their maximum. Treatment with SuperFifty Prime under field conditions across 5 different crops (tomato, rice, onion, pineapple and wheat) increased usage yield by 14%. This translates to a substantial increase in return on investment (ROI) for the crop grower.