Tidal Grow AgriScience, a company in Washington state, is set to launch crop supplements in the Canadian market using an active ingredient sourced from “upcycled” seafood byproducts such as crab shells. They include Tidal Grow Genboost, a seed treatment, and Tidal Grow Chroma, a biostimulant, both made with chitosan. That comes from chitin, a substance found in the shells of crustaceans (crabs, lobsters) and insects. Those two products have been registered with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as plant supplements.
The other two, Tidal Grow Oceanic and Tidal Grow SeaPhos, are also made from seafood byproducts to be sold up here as “cold-processed” biofertilizers.
Chitosan, the company says, can “protect plants on a microscopic level” in a dual role as a biostimulant and biopesticide. Tidal Grow says on its web site that chitosan “directly combats” pests and pathogens such as tar spot, soybean cyst nematode, soybean sudden death syndrome and white mould. — D.B.
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