How the novel biostimulant CYT14 influences nutrient uptake of common foliar nutritional supplements as evidenced by genomics and ICP analysis

Naturally chelated/complexed nutrients have shown superior performance over salts, synthetic chelates and lignosulfonates in field tests and on a molecular level through increased expression of genes involved in nutrient uptake and translocation. In this study, we evaluated the effect of biostimulant CYT14 on specific nutrients supplied as salts, lignosulfonates, EDTA, amino acid and natural chelates. Research was conducted on Arabidopsis thaliana plants grown in a controlled environment. Sixweek- old plants were randomly assigned to ten treatments, including five different foliar products with and without a novel biostimulant. The product and biostimulant response were evaluated for short- and long-term effects. Short-term effects were assessed six hours after the treatment. Long-term effects were tested after seven days, with an additional application of the corresponding products 24 h before tissue collection. The collected tissue was analyzed using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) for evaluation of genes involved in transport, metabolism and homeostasis of several elements including copper, iron, manganese and zinc. On the 7th day, the tissue was also evaluated for nutrient accumulation using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometry. It was demonstrated that application of biostimulant CYT14 with select nutritional supplements improved expression of specific genes and nutrient uptake and accumulation.