A Canadian research paper that concluded Jumpstart doesn’t boost yield or phosphorus uptake is based on outdated field research, says the senior research agronomist with Novozymes, the inoculant’s manufacturer.
“Quite frankly, most of the trials in that paper are obsolete. It was simply exploratory work that was being done,” Gary Hnatowich said about the Western Co-operative Fertilizer trials on penicillium balaii, the active ingredient in Jumpstart, which were conducted between 1989 and 1995.
Hnatowich didn’t work directly on those trials, which failed to demonstrate the efficacy of penicillium balaii, but he was connected to the inoculant research in the early 1990s.
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“I was the third party, doing some independent research trials,” he said.
Hnatowich said the paper, which was co-authored by Viterra agronomy manager Rigas Karamanos and recently published in theCanadian Journal of Plant Science,is a synthesis of 15 to 20 year old data.
He also said researchers at that time didn’t understand how to formulate or apply penicillium balaii.
“Rigas wasn’t around during those days. He’s simply summarizing some data,” Hnatowich said.
“What he’s failing to remember is over half of those years that he’s got, we were in exploratory stages…. We didn’t have a formulation. There wasn’t anything commercialized at the time. We were flying by the seat of our pants.”
As for recent research at Kansas State University, which also concluded Jumpstart doesn’t increase yields or phosphorus uptake, Hnatowich said he wasn’t surprised by the results.
He said Jumpstart performs when soil is likely to respond to applied phosphate. A response is unlikely if there’s already sufficient phosphorus in the soil.
“They (the Kansas State researchers) write within the text of the draft that I saw, at the corn trials and wheat trials, that phosphorus was obviously not deficient,” Hnatowich said.
“Even where they would’ve predicted they would have, they failed to see a phosphate fertilizer response…. Consequently, they could not record an Avail or Jumpstart response.”
Novozymes sponsored the Kansas State field trials, partly because the company wanted to see if there was a potential agronomic benefit from using Avail and Jumpstart.
“Maybe with a combination use of both, we could see even further enhanced phosphate fertilizer efficiency,” Hnatowich said.
The Kansas State trial was just one of many that Novozymes has recently sponsored in the United States.
The company has contracted third-party independent researchers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas to evaluate the effectiveness of Jumpstart.
“And within those trials, we’re seeing a positive response to Jumpstart,” Hnatowich said.
The results will be released shortly, he added.
As well, he said Novozymes and its predecessors conducted 356 farmer field trials on spring wheat, winter wheat, canola, peas and lentils from 1988 to 2009, with and without Jumpstart.
He said those trials have demonstrated an average seven percent yield boost when seed is treated with penicillium balaii.
Hnatowich said the marketplace has already decided that Jumpstart works.
“The use of Jumpstart has grown dramatically over the last number of years. So producers themselves are seeing the effect,” he said.
“Farmers are seeing it. You can’t have 15 to 20 percent of the canola acres in Western Canada being treated without guys having a benefit from the product.”
