No Longer Business As Usual
It’s no longer acceptable to take a “business as usual’ approach to agricultural practices. Whether you’re a believer in manmade climate change or not, high temperatures and drought conditions are issues we’re increasingly having to address, while the ongoing loss of organic matter in our soils severely inhibits its ability to hold water and nutrients.
Dr. Pauline Scheelbeek, lead scientist, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, recently stated, “our study shows that environmental changes such as increased temperature and water scarcity may pose a real threat to global agricultural production, with likely further impacts on food security and population health.”
Stresses such as heat, drought and salinity (abiotic); bacterial and fungal pathogens (biotic); as well as nutrient (e.g. nitrogen, phosphorus) shortage are main factors limiting crop and forage production. Improving plant resilience to stress and the efficiency of fertilizer use are key to sustainable and future agricultural productivity, but this requires new discoveries, approaches and solutions.
We need to develop new choices that can help agriculture address these challenges now and for the future. One area that’s generating interest is recognizing the role and application of peptides for improving plant performance. Peptides are chains of approximately 20 amino acids linked to each other by amide bonds, also known as peptide bonds. We are learning that protein hydrolysates (PHs) are an important group of plant biostimulants, based on a mixture of peptides and amino acids. PHs are mainly produced by enzymatic and/or chemical hydrolysis of proteins from animal- or plant-derived raw materials.
An increasing number of the gene-encoded small peptides are now being discovered to act as regulators of plant development, such as root, leaf or flower development, and of soil microbe interactions, with the potential to regulate stress tolerance or nutrient/fertilizer gain. Another noteworthy advantage of the peptide approach is that these compounds occur naturally and are bioactive when applied externally, providing a swift positive effect on crop performances. Interestingly enough, some soil organisms (nematodes) are already known to produce peptides almost identical in structure to plant peptides and are thus able to alter plant development, demonstrating the potential power of peptides.
Andaman Ag carries a number of products with peptides in their raw material structure, including an excellent fish hydrolysate with chitin called Pacific Gro that can be soil or foliar applied, and our exceptional line of foliar fertilizers: organic certified Agroprime and sustainable Agrostim and Supergrow products.