Published on 06/08/2025
Words: Agrimm Technologies
So, what has happened in the last three years and has this ‘potential’ come to fruition?
Outside of the major chemical company acquisitions, there has been an explosion of players in the bio-stimulant market.
The range of products available to growers makes it hard to make simple evaluations and this is even before you take the cost of the product into account.
If one potential metric is absolute output, then another, more relevant one, is profitability.
How does this product integrate into my crop management plan and are there small changes that can make a big impression?
Agrimm Technologies believes that seed treatments have shown the most consistent and easiest returns to growers.
Platform Seed is a trichoderma seed treatment that is available to NZ and Australian cropping farmers, shown to:
• Improve establishment and persistence.
• Increase root and foliar growth.
• Be compatible with existing chemistry.
• Offer superior yields and profitability.
Manufactured in Canterbury by Agrimm Technologies, Platform Seed is a versatile biological seed treatment that gives growers a chance to integrate beneficial fungi into their crop right from planting.
What does this mean?
Trichoderma are a type of soil borne fungus, found in all soils and which interact with living roots, conferring plant benefits when applied insufficient quantity at the right times.
Trichoderma do not form a mushroom type fruiting body but do grow via a network of mycelial hyphae in the soils.
Most organisms in the soil will gravitate towards root tips and the sugary exudates, however the best strains of trichoderma will also colonise the roots themselves and operate as an endophyte.
These endophytic strains, on entering the plant’s roots, prime the plant’s defence systems which triggers an SAR (systemic acquired response) mechanism within the plant.
If ‘endophytic strains of Trichoderma improve a plant’s photosynthetic capability’, then these best strains have the potential to benefit each crop for the life of the crop.
Trial results
In the past five years, Agrimm Technologies has worked closely with Heinz Wattie’s, trialling the benefits of incorporating Platform Seed with their synthetic seed treatments.
Locally grown pea seed is standardly coated with fungicide in NZ, whilst bean seeds may have already been coated overseas.
We have consistently stated that our trichoderma are compatible with fungicides – and our results support that statement.
In five recent pea trials, where Platform Seed was mixed directly with the fungicide and sprayed together onto the peas at 5 litres per tonne, the combined seed coating showed an improvement of between 6% and 14% in plant establishment counts.
Alongside this, we sampled soils this year in all commercial pea trials and found three times as many trichoderma spores than in the control within two weeks of planting.
We know that trichoderma sustain in and around root systems, since independent work by FAR in cereal crops established that on average there were 100 times as many spores per gram of soil in the treated compared to untreated areas eight months after drilling.
They also showed that 40% of sampled roots contained endophytic trichoderma – purely from the original seed treatment.
It is our belief that seed coated fungicides slow down the growth of fungi within their zone of efficacy, but they do not kill our spores. It has been written that ‘seed applied fungicides act locally: trichoderma can easily outgrow their area of effect’ as the spores remain viable.
As a result of over 40 trials in these crops and some truly outstanding results, we are pleased to be able to say that Platform Seed has been added to the standard seed coating program for all Wattie’s South Island crops.
So, if you grow for Wattie’s, Platform Seed is already on your seed – but what about everyone else?
Several seed companies can apply Platform to your seed, and plenty do every year.
If you are interested in more information, it’s best to talk to Agrimm directly to point you in the right direction.
Remember, by applying Trichoderma from crop to crop and year on year, you can build up the presence of the beneficial fungi in the soil which will enhance your current production practices.
www.agrimm.nz/platform-seed