Helping Close the Yield Gap for More Seed Success
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From the very start of the season, crops are vulnerable to losing yield. Soil conditions, weather, disease, insects — they’re all waiting to make a dent in the productivity of the seed you supply to farmers. The difference between the genetic potential in seed and what it actually yields after harvest is called the yield gap. Narrowing that gap, year after year, sets your customers up for success.
Your customers probably feel like they’re already doing all they can to close the yield gap. Fertilizers that enhance soil nutrients, seed treatments that keep early season pests and diseases at bay and timely rotations of crop protection products have all become essential interventions. But for a growing number of farmers, there’s another tool they’re adding to the must-have list to narrow the yield gap: biologicals.
Corteva Biologicals work with other farm practices and products to help plants do what they already do naturally. This helps narrow the yield gap and support farm success in three main ways:
1. Boost performance
Activating the plant and its environment to maximize the harvest
Biologicals can enhance plants’ ability to utilize nutrients, water and sunlight. For example, some biologicals help plants use nutrients more efficiently or convert nutrients in the air and soil into more readily usable forms. This can enhance the plant’s productivity.
This image compares brace roots from an untreated corn plant (left) and one treated with a biological product from Corteva (right). Larger brace roots help plants remain resilient under certain weather stressors, like high winds.
2. Build resilience
Empowering crop vigor to withstand adversity and stress
Research has shown that plant stress can cause a yield gap of up to 70%, depending on the crop and stressor type.1 Biologicals help enable crops to perform in the face of stress, particularly weather-related abiotic stresses. As weather gets more extreme, farmers need solutions that can help keep plants productive in unpredictable conditions. Heat, drought or too much moisture can all affect hormones that influence yield. In small grain crops, hormone degradation begins at just 67°F. Corteva offers solutions to help offset this heat-related productivity loss, as well as products that help plants be more resilient when conditions are too hot and dry or too cool and wet.
The corn on the right was treated with a biological product from Corteva. This plant developed more root mass and produced larger ears of corn compared to the untreated plant on the left.
3. Protect potential
Shielding crops from pests and disease to ensure viability
Corteva has a robust portfolio of traditional crop protection products to help keep crops healthy. Your customers might wonder if biologicals can replace those existing crop protection solutions. Corteva Biologicals are not designed to replace crop protection products, but to complement them so that farmers can use multiple approaches to reduce the effects of insect pests and diseases.
Factors such as lack of soil nutrients, weather conditions and hungry pests can limit yield potential for even the highestperforming seed. Corteva Biologicals are proven to help mitigate the yield gap, so the seed you provide to farmers can deliver an even more successful and satisfying season.
1 René Schils et al., “Cereal yield gaps across Europe,” European Journal of Agronomy 101, (2019): 109–120, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2018.09.003.
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