February 2019 - In February 2019, STIMUL project team visited the wheat trials in Spain and Greece. In Greece, the trials are located in the northern part of the country, in the region of Thessaloniki whereas in Spain the trials are located in Murcia region. We selected these locations for 2018/2019 wheat trials to study the performances of STIMUL biostimulants in hydric stress conditions. For all these trials, 3 biostimulant treatments are compared to an untreated reference. At the time of the visit, the wheat plants were at the ideal stage for observations: a root system not too developed such as it is easy to remove plants to observe root system.
There were very specific climatic conditions in Greece this year: dry conditions in November/December without rain hence the trials were sown later than traditionally (mid-December, usually end of November), then in December and January there was lots of rain and even snow, which is not usual. All trials were covered by snow in January. Hence this year, there were no hydric stress conditions for the beginning of the cycle for wheat. On the contrary, in Spain strong hydric stress conditions were observed in the region of Murcia this year. For one trial there was no rain from December to the end of February. At the time of our visit, it was clear that the plants strongly suffer from the lack of water. Hence, the climatic conditions are really different from Greece to Spain this year, which is really interesting as it enables the assessment of agronomic performances in diverse climatic conditions.
Observations on the root systems were performed by STIMUL project team during the visit in Greece and Spain. It was clear on all the trials that the development of the root system of wheat plant is enhanced with the biostimulant treatment, let’s wait for the harvest to see if such a more developed root system triggers higher yield!
