Aqua-Yield Looks for Big Results from 'Smallest Innovation in Agriculture'

Aqua-Yield of Draper uses nanotechnology to decrease the amount of fertilizer needed for crops and increase yields. 

Clark Bell, CEO of Aqua-Yield -- a new company in Draper that uses nano technology to make fertilizers more efficient -- describes studies taking place in their indoor research and development facility. The company says its products can cut down the use of fertilizers by as much as 80 percent or more. 
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Aqua-Yield CEO Clark Bell says that’s the promise of the new but rapidly growing Draper company’s products: Use less fertilizer and increase yields with its “smallest innovation in agricultural history.” 

The problem with most manufactured fertilizers in their traditional forms, he said, are that only a portion is absorbed by the plants. The rest is wasted and can run off into aquifers, streams and lakes.

Aqua-Yield’s innovation reduces or enlarges the size of fertilizer particles so they’re nanosize — anything between 1 and 100 nanometers, which are one-billionth of a meter — then combines them with ultrapure water. 

The combination results in a molecular shield, which the company calls its “Nano-Shield,” as water molecules surround the smaller fertilizer particles. According to  farmers who have used the processed fertilizer, it improves plant health and greatly increases yields. 

Cotton seedlings sprout up in the research and development facility at Aqua-Yield, a new company in Draper that uses nano technology to make fertilizers that it says are much more efficient for farmers to use. 
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune)

An experiment gone right 

Bell’s father, Warren, and grandfather, T.H. Bell, the former secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan, founded the BioGrass sod farm in 1979 in Eagle Mountain.

The basic technology for miniaturizing the fertilizer particles came from another entity that was working on human nutrition at the nanolevel. Technicians at the farm experimented with the idea of applying the technology to increase sod yields.

In 2013, applying the technology to fertilizer used on sod produced a “massive uptick in results,” said Bell.

BioGrass sent their product out for testing on other sod farms with similar results and then to citrus growers in Florida.

By February 2014, according to Bell, citrus growers also saw positive results, including a reduction in the amount of greening, a disease that has been devastating crops in that state. 

Aqua-Yield was formed in January 2014 to market products first developed at BioGrass and to continue research and development.

It’s owned by four groups that include Clark and Warren Bell; 10 farmers; Fraser Bullock and his son, Mike Bullock, who is president of Aqua-Yield. Fraser Bullock, managing director of Sorenson Capital, was chief operating officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.  

Warren Bell, chairman of Aqua-Yield, a new company in Draper that uses nano technology to make fertilizers that it says are much more efficient for farmers to use, describes the process of determining the proper application of its product.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Nanosize solutions 

The nanosized particles seem to work best when delivered though the soil using nearly any type of irrigation systems, but they also can be sprayed on plants from above, Hendrickson said.

Beyond the small-scale interaction with a plant, there are wider implications for lower levels of fertilizer use with higher yields, he said. 

“We’re not only creating a more economic production scheme, we’re also resulting in less environmental footprint for agricultural production systems in general,” he said, “reduced carbon footprint, reduced runoff into the water table.” 

Source: The Salt Lak Tribune

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• Agriculture Company
• Agriculture
• Fertilizers
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Nanotechnology
• Nano Materials
• Agriculture & Forestry
• Fertigation management
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Fertilizer
• Fertilizers and Pesticides
• Fertigation
• Agricultural Technology
• Fertilizer
• Nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology
• Agriculture & Food