Is nitrogen use limiting your potato crop?

This article was updated to include 2023 data.

What is Envita?

Envita^® is the leading systemic nitrogen-fixing biological that lets you stay one step ahead of your plant’s nitrogen needs by enabling the entire plant – including leaves and roots – to fix nitrogen all season long. Envita is systemic, ensuring plants have a consistent nitrogen supply and can make more efficient use of available nitrogen.

Available exclusively from Syngenta again in 2024, Envita features the living bacteria Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus – a naturally occurring food-grade bacteria that enables a unique mode of nitrogen fixation in a wide variety of crops.

After application, the bacteria form a symbiotic relationship with the host plant, ultimately replicating and spreading through the plant’s cells.

The bacteria then begin fixing nitrogen from the air and continue to do so throughout the season, offering the host plant an alternate source of nitrogen from application through harvest.

Trial results

In 2022 and 2023, Syngenta partnered with growers across Canada to trial Envita nitrogen-fixing biological in potatoes. They added Envita at a rate 95 mL/ac to their existing fertilizer, irrigation and pest management programs, keeping the rest of their program unchanged.

The result: 91 per cent of the trials showed a positive yield response from one application of Envita, when compared to the untreated check.

In field trials conducted across Canada in 2022 and 2023, potatoes treated with Envita outyielded the untreated checks 91% of the time, delivering an average yield advantage of 36 cwt/ac over untreated.

Diving deeper into the trial results

In 2022, 100% of the trials (n = 22) resulted in a positive response.

In 2023, there were four trials with a negative response, which we investigated further. Once graded out, the site out of MB, with a -14 cwt/ac response resulted in paying out 1 cwt less than the untreated area. Other negative responses out of AB were attributed to field variability when we checked with the growers’ agronomists. You could say that all the positive results could be field variability as well – but 39 out of 43 trials show that the odds are definitely in your favor.

Maximize your Envita application with these tips:

Envita is best applied with an early season fungicide, add in 95 mL/ac of Envita. That being said, most growers have been applying Envita at row closure.

• Avoid application during hot, dry conditions that can harm the live bacteria.
• Add Envita to the tank last to keep the largest number of live bacteria active at application.
• Ideally spray in the morning when leaf stomata are open and plants are most receptive to Envita.
• Do not mix Envita with copper (copper kills bacteria and Envita is a food grade bacteria).
• Do not use water treated with copper sulfate (copper sulfate is good for keeping algae down in water holding tanks, but copper kills the live bacteria in Envita. Another option is to use black or dark holding tanks).

Find more foliar application best practices in this brochure.

Key takeaway

The team at Syngenta continues to run grower trials each year, building on our experience and agronomic insight. To date growers have used it in addition to their standard fertilizer program, letting Envita fill the crop’s nitrogen needs throughout the growing season when standard fertilizer may not be available.

Looking for more information or wondering about how Envita performs in other horticulture crops? Talk to your local Syngenta rep or retail partner.

Performance evaluations are based on internal trials, field observations and/or public information. Data from multiple locations and years should be consulted whenever possible. Individual results may vary depending on local growing, soil, and weather conditions.

Always read and follow label directions. The Syngenta logo is a trademark of a Syngenta Group Company. Envita^® is a trademark of Azotic Technologies^® LTD. Used under license.