Although there are many facets to the overall agricultural industry, one overriding trend drives much of what everyone (and every product) is trying to accomplish — improve crop yields. It is from this never-ending effort that virtually all other activities take root.

With this goal in mind, Sandy, UT-based Aqua-Yield has introduced nanoliquids, a new category in agriculture, with a product called NanoPro. According to Jim Krebsbach, Vice President of Sales, NanoPro is unlike anything the agricultural industry has seen up until now.

“If I had to describe NanoPro in just one word, it would be “gamechanger,’” says Krebsbach. “We feel that what we have here today in NanoPro will help separate us from the rest of the industry, because it’s a product that addresses today’s needs in the crop protection product markets, but it also can help with future needs, too.”

A Turf Background

To appreciate how Aqua-Yield came to develop NanoPro, however, one must go back to the company’s beginnings. Aqua-Yield was originally started by a group of growers back in 2013, with Warren and Clark Bell heading it up. The goal of the company was to employ nanoliquid technology to help growers in the turf industry reduce weed pressures in their fields. From there, the company quickly began expanding into the agricultural space as well.

“Aqua-Yield was started with an eye towards culture and meeting the needs of customers,” says Jenny Phillips, Director of Marketing. “And this has not changed since the beginning.”

For agriculture, Aqua-Yield set out to create a product that would help crops better absorb crop protection products to help fend off yield-robbing weeds. What it came up with was NanoPro.

Utilizing the company’s NanoShield Technology, NanoPro was designed to enhance the efficiency of all crop protection products, greatly improving performance. NanoPro can be added to any spray mixture to enhance plant uptake of specialty and generic herbicide, fungicide, and pesticide products, says Krebsbach.

“NanoPro can help the crops get more active ingredients into the plant tissues then would otherwise be possible,” he says. “Our studies show the efficiency improves between 20% and 25% when growers are using NanoPro in their fields.”

Based upon the research, NanoPro can help control such weeds as lambsquarters, pigweed, and marestail and diseases such as snow mold and blight. According to Krebsbach, it can be blended with such popular herbicides as glyphosate, 2,4-D, glufosinate, and without any problems.

Dr. Chris Hendrickson, Director of Research and Development, expands upon this NanoPro effect using an example. “With glyphosate, NanoPro helps weeds absorb ions into the plant tissues at a much higher rate and concentration than could be achieved through just using standard glyphosate additives alone,” says Hendrickson. “Over the past few years, we’ve conducted a lot of field trials with NanoPro in greenhouses and across the country to verify these results.”

With this database regarding the NanoPro product’s performance in hand, Aqua-Yield was ready to start promoting NanoPro to the agricultural industry at-large going into the 2020 season. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut off the company’s ability to promote the product using traditional in-person selling and trade shows, for the most part.

Instead, says Krebsbach, Aqua-Yield sent out a lot of mailings to industry people. “It was important to do this kind of outreach, because educating and understanding nanoliquid technology is something new for many people,” he says. “There’s been a lot of ‘snake oil’ out there in the past, and we have to explain to potential customers that NanoPro is an entirely new kind of product when it comes to crop inputs.”

The Supply Chain

Although the COVID-19 pandemic did negatively impact Aqua-Yield’s ability to market NanoPro face-to-face, it did offer a market opportunity as well: In the supply chain. According to Dr. Hendrickson, supply chain issues are “huge” right now, with a significant backlog in inputs coming from foreign countries tied up outside of the nation’s ports.

Indeed, based upon several expert observations, there are usually, between 20 and 40 ships waiting to unload at any time on the West Coast of the U.S. However, at last count, there were more than 70 ships anchored off the coast, waiting to unload, with 400 more ships getting ready to sail to the West Coast from Asian ports before the end of the year.

“In this kind of environment, growers having access to new tools to help keep their yields up and crop pests down will be critically important,” says Hendrickson. “And that’s where a product like NanoPro can help.”

Besides promising fewer trips down the rows, “consumin g less gasoline and reducing run-off,” Hendrickson also says NanoPro can aid growers in their ongoing efforts to promote sustainable ag practices. “One of the major goals of regenerative agriculture is reduce the number of ag inputs being used in the field to maintain crop yields,” he says. “NanoPro usage can definitely make this happen by helping the plants better utilize what inputs were put into the field the first time around.”