Conducted by: Pacific Ag Research
Huma Gro® Products: Ultra-Precision™ Blend (Fresca CA Strawberry Mix), Promax®, and Zap®
OBJECTIVE
This field trial assessed the effects on strawberry yields of replacing field fumigation with periodic applications of Huma Gro® Promax® and Zap® and replacing a grower’s standard fertilizer program with irrigation-applied Ultra-Precision™ blended liquid Huma Gro® crop nutrition products.
CONCLUSIONS
This trial and others demonstrate that the use of Huma Gro® Promax® and Zap® can achieve high yields on Portola strawberries in California, even without traditional fumigation. Treatments with Promax® and Zap®, which were applied via irrigation, have the advantage over traditional fumigation in that they are nontoxic, have no reentry interval, and could be applied at any time during the growing season. This is a tremendous advantage over traditional fumigation.
This trial also demonstrates that the Huma Gro® Ultra-Precision™ blend of liquid fertilizers applied through irrigation resulted in yields superior to the grower’s standard fertilizer program. The combination of Huma Gro® Ultra-Precision™ blend of liquid fertilizers plus the Huma Gro® fumigation replacement products of Promax® and Zap® (Treatment 1) increased yields by 97% over the control (Treatment 3).
Figure 2 and Table 1 demonstrate that for the two trials that used PicClor preplant field fumigation (Trial 2 and Trial 3), weekly yields began dropping off at week 11/6, while the trials that replaced preplant field fumigation with periodic applications of Promax® and Zap® (Trial 1 and Trial 4) continued to produce at relatively high levels until the end of the season.
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