Yellow Jacket® Enhanced Seed Coating

Yellow Jacket® is a proprietary seed coating containing a natural water-absorbent material made from corn starch. This enhanced coating can hold up to 600 times its weight in water. Research at the University of New Mexico, North Carolina State University, and Texas A & M University proved conclusively that seed coated with Yellow Jacket established faster and required less water. Our products, from grasses to legumes, are available with our Yellow Jacket® coating.

What is Enhanced Seed Coating?

 

Featuring a starch-based super-absorbent capable of holding up to 600 times its own weight in water, University of New Mexico trials demonstrate Yellow Jacket enhanced seed establishes faster than raw seed and requires less water. Faster, stronger establishment provides superior natural competition to weeds and disease. This results in improved quality, reduced establishment costs and faster utilization of a newly seeded area. 

 

Yellow Jacket seed enhancement is ideal for those less than optimum weather conditions or when conditions of use don’t allow for normal conditions of establishment. 

Stronger Disease Resistance- Ohio State University

Pam Sherratt, Horticulture & Crop Science Specialist at Ohio State, conducted a study with grass seed coatings. She found that Yellow Jacket was beneficial, even for fast establishing grasses like perennial ryegrass and annual ryegrass. The coated seed was not as disease prone as the uncoated entries particularly wnen coated with a fungicide. Whereas fungicide can easily wash off the uncoated seed too quickly to be of benefit, the coating held the fungicide longer.

Better Seed Establishment- New Mexico State University

Barenbrug conducted two extensive studies on seed coating with Bernd Leinauer at New Mexico State University. Bermudagrass, bentgrass, bluegrass, tall fescue and fine fescue seeds coated with our proprietary Yellow Jacket coating showed better establishment than uncoated seed.

Graph: Yellow Jacket coated seed's ability to nearly double the germination percentage over uncoated seed is clearly displayed.

More Forage Under Reduced Irrigation - Texas A & M AgriLife

Research was conducted at the Texas AgriLife Researach Center which specifically tested the ability of Yellow Jacket® to affect dry matter production in tall fescue under drought conditions. The results were impressive. According to the study: "In the reduced irrigation treatment, seed coating (P=.0003) and defoliation height (P=0003) as main effects did affect aboveground biomass production. Seed coating increased aboveground biomass by an average of 14% when compared with non-coated seed regardless of seeding rate and defoliation height." 

Graph: Under reduced irrigation, seed with our Yellow Jacket seed coating produced significantly more biomass per acre at three different seeding rates.

Benefits of Yellow Jacket Seed Coating

  • Less water needed for establishment 
  • Improves seedling and root development 
  • Easy to visually monitor during application 
  • Coating enhances uniform seeding 
  • Coated seed moves readily throught the canopy for improved soil contact 
  • Proven performance even in the most demanding applications 
  • Rigorously tested to ensure durability
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