Lono

Conventional fertiliser is wasteful and environmentally unstable

Standard nitrogen fertilisation is wasteful and inefficient, research shows that typically less than 30% of nitrogen applied to crops actually ends up in the plant. The rest is lost due to a combination of volatilization and leaching, with much of the nitrogen farmers apply being lost to the environment.

With conventional fertilisers nitrogen is mostly taken up by crops in the nitrate form regardless of what type of N was applied, as they are not stable and can be altered due to conversion by bacteria. Why is that important? The typical effect seen when nitrogen is applied, is an increase in growth that is mostly vegetative, so plants can become weak and straggly with too much height and leaf, and not enough energy is used for fruit development. This is not a nitrogen effect, rather it is a nitrate effect created by the plant overproducing the auxin growth hormone in response to nitrates accumulating in the leaf.

When plants feed on amine nitrogen, cytokinin hormone levels increase. This encourages more bushy plants with more root branching and greater production of flowers and fruit. The problem is that farmers don’t see any difference between nitrogen products as they all change to mostly nitrate before the plant takes them in.

Limin technology makes Lono more efficient

This is where Lono, the world’s most advanced nitrogen fertiliser can help. Lono is powered by unique LimiN chemistry developed by Levity to hold the form as amine – ensuring most of the N ends up in the crop, giving good growth with small inputs.

Growth in the right place

With conventional nitrogen, growers have to be careful; too much and the crop gets leggy and quality drops. With Lono the growth is in the right place. Growers see shorter, bushier plants with a higher fruit load and less quality problems. Levity’s research shows that Lono significantly improves growth habit giving higher yields in fruit, vegetable and potato crops.

More efficient metabolism

We feed crops nitrogen to get growth, but plants must use energy to process and assimilate it. The more efficiently that plants can turn nitrogen into growth (using less carbon from the air), the better, particularly when the crop is stressed as access to CO2 is reduced under stress conditions.

Lono is more easily metabolized than conventional nitrogen fertilisers, providing nitrogen in a form that is 12 times more energy efficient than the nitrate most conventional fertilisers are taken up as. Levity’s research shows that when plants are supplied with Lono, photosynthesis is increased to higher levels than with standard nitrogen fertilisers, allowing better growth.

Lono acts on three levels. It gets more N into the crop, generates growth in the part of the crop we harvest, and is easy for the plant to process, even when stressed. Growers get higher yields and healthier crops that perform better when growing conditions are bad.

Lono is the result of a huge amount of research into the science of nitrogen assimilation, which is why it is trusted by farmers around the world to improve yield and quality.