Photo by Tom Baumann
Fertilizer
The Lucent Biosciences team Devon Simpson, Jason McNamee and Laura Jeffries are getting ready to perform a trial at Jason Smith’s blueberry farm in Abbotsford.
What do dairy manure and pea and lentil seed hulls have in common? Aside from being waste material, they are also ingredients in Lucent Biosciences new Soileos micronutrient fertilizer.
Manure solids are separated from liquids through centrifuge and make up the base of the product, says Jason McNamee, Lucent’s co-founder and chief product officer. The Vancouver-based company received a BC Agritech grant to scale up the production process of the sustainable fertilizer, to conduct field and greenhouse testing and to run test marketing. Early tests show an up to 20 per cent increase in yields, according to the company’s website.
Long-term perennial crops like fruit trees, berries and grapes have unique nutrient needs and McNamee says Soileos is a carbon-neutral way to fulfill these needs.
“Particularly for long-lived crops like trees and vines, there is a long-term removal of micronutrients from those soils,” he says. “We need to replace those micronutrients at a rate commensurate with their removal. Soil applied micronutrients contribute to overall plant health, from roots to shoots to fruits.”
Because this fertilizer binds micronutrients to the manure solids, the microbiome is supported and nutrients are provided to the crop as needed, without any concerns of excess nutrient leaching into water sources.
Research on blueberries has shown an improvement in the grade of berries. This effect is expected in other orchard, berry and vine crops. Abbotsford blueberry grower Jason Smith will be trialing the fertilizer in the fall for efficacy and the company is looking for other growers to test the product on site.