October 2017 - One of the objectives of STIMUL Life project is to evaluate the performances of biostimulant seed treatments in different cultural conditions. Hence for each crop, a high number of locations were selected to assess the biostimulant performances in a variety of agricultural conditions: climatic zones, type of soil, crops variety, cultural practices… For each crop, trials are performed in 3 different European countries selected on the basis of their ranking in terms of yield volume per year. Hungary represents an important zone of production of corn in Europe, with 10% of the corn produced in Europe every year. Hungary is the third produced of corn in Europe after France and Romania.
During two days in October 2017, the STIMUL project team visited three of the four corn trials located in Hungary (the fourth one was already harvested at the time of the visit). For these visits the project team was accompanied by the field technician that was in charge of the trial during the season. The main objective of these visits was to evaluate the quality of the trial managed by our contractor and to make qualitative observations of the different biostimulant modalities along with quantitative measurements of the yield parameters (number of grains per corncob).
Two of the three trials visited were very homogeneous, well maintained and should give interesting yield results to analyze. The third trial was damaged by animals and will surely not be exploitable. The season was really dry in Hungary and the plants seem to have suffered from drought. The exploitation of these trials should give interesting results regarding the capabilities of the biostimulant treatment to help the plants to resist to hydric stress conditions.
The three trials were separated in two parts: one cultivated with standard nitrogen input and the second one with a reduction by 50% of the nitrogen inputs. A clear difference was visible between the corn plant with full nitrogen input and the ones with half nitrogen inputs in particular in terms of corncob diameter (see picture below, corn cob on the left part of the picture where cultivated with full nitrogen inputs and the ones on the right part cultivated with half nitrogen input).
