After spending the past five years of its infinitely long life in a scientific lab, this particular bacteria strain is finally back home and hard at work in Mother Earth’s dirt.
Having out-performed thousands of its cousins in the Petri dish qualifying rounds, the growth room competition, the gruelling greenhouse event and finally the real world of outside plots, this one specific strain was pronounced the winner and was scaled up to become the XiteBio canola enhancing inoculant known as Yield+.
In 2011 and 2012, the XiteBio Yield+ inoculant gave North Dakota farmer Curt Honeyman canola yield boosts that averaged eight percent.
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“Overall, my untreated canola check yielded 1,625 pounds per acre (33 bushels per acre) for the two years,” said Honeyman.
“The 20 acre plots I treated with Yield+ averaged 1,940 lb. per acre (39 bu. per acre) for those two years. I’m pretty happy with those results.”
Honeyman treated only 20 acres in 2011 and 2012 because it’s all the product he could get. Last year he wasn’t able to find any product, but this year he has enough to treat his entire 300 acres of canola.
“It’s easy to work with. I mix it with my Roundup when I spray at the four or five leaf stage.”
Max Miller and son Ryan tried Yield+ on their canola in 2012 when XiteBio sent them enough sample product to treat 10 acres. They were happy with the results and bought enough for 140 acres last year.
The older Miller said they will buy enough for their entire 380 acres of canola this year. He said the liquid is easy to use and mixes well when sprayed with Roundup.
Average yield boost in the two years was 150 lb. of canola seed per acre, or 3.5 bu. per acre.
Miller said there’s a bit of a story behind the photo of 20-year-old Ryan taken in 2012 when XiteBio officials drove down from Winnipeg to inspect some of their North Dakota trials.
“Well, Ryan’s kind of laid back about stuff. The reps pulled up some plants from the treated 10 acre plot and they were going on and on and on bragging about the root ball and long pods and all that,” Miller said.
“Ryan figured it was all just typical salesman BS, so he didn’t pay much attention. He really didn’t care one way or the other.
“Then we went over to our regular untreated canola and pulled up some plants. They looked pretty poor in comparison. Ryan went, ‘holy crap, this stuff actually works.’ That’s the photo they took that day, with him holding the two samples.”
