5 Reasons to Use Seed Treatment

Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought, “Do I really need seed treatment?”

Keep that hand up if your response was something like, “No,” “Nah,” “Don’t see the point,” or “Not this year.”

To all the skeptics with your hands still up, hopefully this post educates and inspires you to reconsider those thoughts. It’s a good read, we promise. To all the non-skeptics with your hands down, hopefully this post reaffirms your decision to use seed treatment for this upcoming planting season.

Now, before we get into why seed treatment is beneficial, let’s first explain what it is.

Seed treatment is a carefully selected combination of fungicides, insecticides, and other add-on ingredients that works to suppress, control, and repel plant pathogens, insects, and other pests that attack seeds and seedlings. A polymer coating locks the treatment onto the seed, reducing the risk of flaking and dust formation.

Treatment is applied to naked seeds prior to planting via a seed treater—which uses cutting-edge technology to administer consistent, high-quality, precision amounts of treatment to maximize efficiency, effectiveness, and costs.

So, why should you use seed treatment? Well…

Your seeds are likely the most important investment you have on your farm. And they’re the most fragile investment, too. Just look at them. They’re tiny. Feeble. Helpless. Seed treatment guards your seed investment from irreversible damage from numerous early-season pests, like insects, diseases, nematodes, and more. It gives your seeds the best chance of survival at the most delicate and vulnerable stages of their lives.

Not only does seed treatment protect your plants, it administers growth-enhancing nutrients in the process. Treatment ingredients like inoculants, biologicals, and nematicide are tested and proven to boost germination rates, vigor and root development. Plus, they bolster soil biodiversity to jumpstart the health of future seeds. The result? Stronger, healthier plants and more resilient yields—now and in the future.

Unless you’re a psychic, it’s impossible to know exactly what the future holds for your fields. (If you are a psychic, please message us directly. Need lotto numbers.) Weather, diseases, pest invasions, and a variety of other unforeseen circumstances could all impact the success of your harvest. Even if you haven’t had any serious diseases or issues before, it only takes one bad year to cause one big problem.

Seed treatment puts this unpredictability to rest. By treating your seeds, they’ll be likely to survive should unfortunate circumstances arise. After all, prevention is way more effective than a cure. Plus, you’ll have peace of mind that your crops are staying protected. Who knows, maybe you’ll even sleep better.

Between tropical storms, abnormally strong high-pressure systems, and 500-year floods in 2018 and 2019, the U.S. was pretty soaked for much of those years. And that could result in more soilborne issues down the road. Why? After heavy rainfall and snowfall, fields typically take longer to drain. The heavily saturated soil is ideal for soilborne pathogens—which puts more seeds and seedlings at risk of infection not only now, but when heavy rain occurs again in the future.

Seed treatment can offset these problems. It provides excellent early-season control of seed and seedling pathogens caused by cool, wet weather. And it can fight off early insect pests and diseases, too. Talk about making a splash.

At UAS, our proprietary, power-packed N-Compass seed treatment is second to none—literally. A recent trial comparing 16 treatments showed that N-Compass consistently trumped the others, with higher average yields and better overall performance. Multiple modes of action on a variety of targets like White Mold and Sudden Death Syndrome have helped position N-Compass as a leader amongst seed treatments. Plus, it comes at a fraction of the cost of comparable treatment products. To learn more and for more specific trial info, contact a UAS rep at 888-402-4787.

Well, there you have it.

Sure, there are countless other reasons to use seed treatment, but we’re running out of space here. Hopefully we already convinced you by now. If we didn’t, drop us a line and we’ll try again. Or we can set up a meeting and discuss face-to-face. Business is done better in person, after all.

For more helpful tips and advice, be on the lookout for more articles. Or call 888-402-4787.