Seed Treatment Guide

When Should You Treat Your Seed?

We recommend treating your seed in advance of planting day.  The seed treatment can be applied up to 90 days before planting without any detrimental effects to your early vigor or seedling emergence. So, choosing a time of the year when soil temperatures haven’t warmed up yet and are too cold to do much else is usually the best strategy.

What’s The Best Method For Treatment?

If you’re treating enough seed to cover a significant number of acres it’s often best to get your seeds treated in a commercial seed treater. Commercial treaters that are equipped with powerful atomizers can usually maximize the coverage seed.  If you don’t have access to a commercial treater, box to box treaters can do a significant amount of seed rather efficiently.   And, if you’re doing a smaller trial, doing a quick treatment using a spinning barrel, drum, or small cement mixer can work very well. In addition, we now provide a box to box treatment option that you can purchase.

Where Can I Buy The Product?

You can order Invigor 8, Invigor 8+, and RizNate by contacting your sales rep or purchasing them here.

Most growers  get seed from their dealer that has already been treated with Cruiser, Quadris, Poncho or any number of other fungicides or insecticides already applied.  Invigor 8™ can be applied over the top of other seed treatments.  You will still get your fungicidal or insecticidal protection and the vigorous, even emergence and early plant growth Invigor 8 and Invigor 8+, and RizNate are famous for.

How Can I Tell If It’s Working?

We recommend that growers do tests.  Common tests include a side-by-side trial.

Side By Side Planter Trial

A great way to run this trial is to fill half your planter boxes with treated seed and leave the other half untreated.  Once the planter turns around at the end of the field, a swath as wide as your planter will be treated.  It is wise to both mark these with flags, or stakes, and denote the count on your GPS since physical markers can get moved or run over during the course of the season and disappear.  If possible, it’s an excellent idea to get a few different replications if you’re going to compare averages of treated versus untreated rows.

Treated Versus Control Field Trial

Another way to handle testing is to just do an entire field with treated seed and another one untreated as a control.  You can either do two different fields or subdivide a pivot.  While it’s a good test, due to the lack of replications and the occasional variability between fields, strict studies usually stick to strip tests within the same field as described above.  If you decide to do two different fields side-by-side,  remember to take note of any historical differences between the two fields in regards to drainage, nutrient levels, pest pressure, or crop rotations that could influence your findings.

What Should I Expect From My Treated Crops?

Seeds treated with Invigor 8™ typically emerge earlier, with more vigor, have stronger root and early seedling growth, exhibit a more even emergence (which leads to higher yields), and have better overall germination (more plants = higher yields).

Getting Started

If you’d like to see what Invigor 8™ can do on your crops this year, contact us and let us know what you’re growing, how many acres you’re thinking about treating, your planting population, and any questions you still have about the product. You can also learn more about Invigor 8, Invigor 8+, and RizNate on the Genesis Ag product page.