Plug into nitrogen from a sustainable source

Capture something incredible for your potatoes

Agricultural uses of nitrogen make it the dominant source of nitrogen losses in the EU, with the current loss estimated to be 6.5-8 million tons per year and nitrates affecting over 18% of groundwater bodies in the EU.

Potato growers looking to optimise their fertiliser applications have access to a new nitrogen efficiency optimiser widely available across the UK and Ireland for the first time this year.

BlueN™ from Corteva Agriscience is an innovative biostimulant that enables plants to fix nitrogen from the air and make it available to the plant in the usable ammonium form. In doing so BlueN provides supplemental nitrogen to crops without the risk of leaching, increasing the crop nutrition efficiency.

BlueN contains a naturally occurring bacteria called Methylobacterium symbioticum. Approved in a wide range of crops including potatoes, it is applied at the low rate of 0.333 kg/ha. The bacteria in BlueN enter the potato plant through stomata translocating to the surrounding leaves, stems and roots quickly colonising the plant.

Once inside the plant the bacteria uses methanol given off by the potato plant during growth as an energy source and fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere, converting it into ammonium which is used by the plant to make glutamine, an amino acid used to maintain growth and health of a plant.

Methylobacterium symbioticum is an endophyte bacterium, this means it can exist inside the plant for the lifetime of the plant, providing a constant sustainable source of supplemental nitrogen estimated in trials to be on average 30kgN/ha over this time.

BlueN Meta-analysis: Potatoes

A meta data analysis of data from a large number of potato trials has shown an average 2.5t/ha increase in yield and an average of 3.3t/ha increase in potato yield in the 80% of all trials that gave a positive yield response.