Detecting Crop Stress Factors in Real-time
Insight Ag regularly checks for crop stress factors that could lead to changes in your plant’s evolution over time. Sometimes this stress eventually destroys a crop completely, but often the plant can still survive through them albeit with changes. There are several different categories of stress factors:
Physical Plant Stress: One of the most common, which involves things like drought, flooding, temperature, and water.
Chemical Plant Stress: Factors can include air pollution, pesticides, and soil pH.
Biotic Plant Stress: Occurs due to living external factors such as animals, humans, and bacteria.. These can play a direct role in diminishing nutrient uptake, affecting your harvest.
Abiotic Plant Stress: Results from non-living external factors that are specific to your environment.
So when stressors like the ones above are observed, it can be an early warning sign. Often there are a variety of solutions we’ve seen farmers use to address them. Silicon has been noted to increase the immune response and increase yields. Biofertilizers/biostimulants can increase resistance to some of these stresses, while also aiding in recovery. Usually, the first defense against many of these factors is agronomic management. We’ve seen farmers get ahead of these issues just by having a plan of action.