JOHNSTON, Iowa — A nutritional naturally-derived seed treatment that delivers nutrients to support healthy corn emergence awaits regulatory approval.
Corteva Agriscience announced the public launch of Lumidapt Valta LS nutrition seed treatment during a July 10 media event at its Pioneer headquarters in Johnston.
Pending regulatory approval, Lumidapt Valta LS will become part of Corteva’s LumiGEN corn seed treatment package.
Lumidapt Valta LS contains lignosulfonates, which are biopolymers derived from the lignin present in the cell walls of all plants.
“The lignosulfonate found in Lumidapt Valta LS is extracted from pine trees,” said Brad Van Kooten, Pioneer Seeds marketing leader for seed applied technologies.
“It’s a biodegradable substance that’s constantly generated by the paper milling industry. It’s important to Corteva and the farmers we serve to be able to bring forward seed treatments with sustainable features like this.”
The nutrients supplied by Lumidapt Valta LS — including boron, sulfur, potassium, manganese, cobalt and molybdenum — are critical to early season corn health. Each of these nutrients play a specific role in germination and seedling development.
Timely, uniform emergence is a key factor in promoting higher yields at the season’s end.
Agronomists have noted quantifiable drops in yield where plant to plant emergence is delayed by more than three to four days.
Observations indicate that as the emergence gap grows, so do yield losses. This is because plants that are slower to emerge face greater competition for the soil nutrients, water and sunlight they need.
“It is a proven biological fertilizer, and by proven what I mean is we have used Lumidapt Valta in other parts of the world. We’ve used it in Europe on other crops, currently it is our standard in Latin America, and so we’ve got a really good experience with this,” Van Kooten said.
“However, we’re not going to rest on our data from Europe or data from Latin America. We have to test them in the U.S. We want to make sure it works with all those components in our existing recipe. We want to make sure there’s no negative effects when we combine everything, and so we’ve done very thorough testing in the U.S. also, and we’ve seen very good results in the U.S.
“We saw a solid two-bushel advantage over 70% of the time at 72 locations over three years of testing in the Midwest. We saw it in tough environments. We saw it in really optimum environments.
“There’s a lot of other products that you might see in the marketplace that have nutrient blends that you put on the seed. We’ve tested lots of them and have not seen much of a response. This one has given us some really nice documented two-bushel yield response consistently across lots of different environments.”
Good Fit
Lumidapt Valta LS is the latest advancement in the LumiGEN corn seed treatment portfolio and provides robust protection against insects, nematodes and fungal diseases.
“Our goal is to continuously improve seed treatments for farmers planting Corteva seed. Innovations like these help our customers protect their valuable seed investment and bring in more bushels,” Van Kooten said.
Adding a new component to the recipe also creates complementary effects. For example, Lumidapt Valta LS is a particularly strong companion to Lumialza nematicide seed treatment, a standard ingredient in the LumiGEN seed treatment package for corn.
Looking ahead to the final stretch of the regulatory process, Van Kooten said the new product will become a standard part for Corteva’s seed treatment package.
“We’re still waiting on regulatory approval. As it happens, we’re going to flip the switch and every seed from there on that gets treated at our production facility will have this and it will be across recipes. So, a farmer doesn’t have to worry about if they have to order it, do they have to pay extra specifically for this; the answer is no. It will just come as part of your package,” he said.
“We think regulatory approval can happen as early as October. We think that regulatory process-wise, we’ve got a really good regulatory team. They do a nice job. We think there’s a good chance it will happen in October to use in 2026.
“As soon as that happens, that seed from that point on will get Lumidapt Valta LS and it’s just going to be the standard from that point on.”
