The Crop Nutrient Advisor app, available for Android and Apple phones, shows photos of plants with specific deficiencies and recommends the nutrient needed to correct the problem.
A Dinuba, California-based company specializing in plant nutrition has developed a phone app that helps growers identify and treat crop nutrient deficiencies. The company — Nutrient Technologies, Inc. — has been manufacturing and selling agricultural fertilizer products since 1986 in the Central Valley and throughout California, specializing in citrus crops.
The app, called Crop Nutrient Advisor, shows photos of plants with specific deficiencies, describes the appearance of the leaves and makes recommendations on the type of nutrient needed to correct the deficiency. Included are specific reference guides, such as a soil pH chart that shows optimum uptake ranges, and Mulder’s chart, which shows antagonism and synergism of nutrients.
“A lot of our customers are citrus growers, and we hope they will find this app will help them identify nutrition problems in their trees,” Andrea Holeman, assistant marketing manager for Nutrient Technologies, said. “We wanted to create an app that wasn’t just a product brochure for our Tech-Flo products. We wanted one growers would actually use.”
“Our core purpose is to serve agriculture with innovative plant nutrition products that are safe, effective and easy to use,” Holeman said. “We feel this app works neatly with this core goal of our company.”
Beginning work with micronutrients in the 1980s, Nutrient Technologies has found that Central Valley soils typically have manganese and iron deficiencies.
“Iron deficiency can’t be treated by adding iron to high pH soils; it just isn’t available to plants,” according to Brandon Land, sales manager for Nutrient Technologies. “We have developed foliar sprays that show excellent uptake.”
While past field studies have confirmed the efficacy of its foliar sprays, the company is continuing to test and evaluate products and procedures. Land mentioned that Nutrient Technologies is running a new field trial in the Ivanhoe area, which he expects will provide even more information about product uptake. “We will have tissue sample analysis results from before and after applications, as well as results from an untreated control group,” he said.
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