Biotech product to improve on fertilizer

Richmond, Utah — A new biotech company that produces a soil conditioner that makes fertilizers more efficient is awaiting approval from city officials to start construction this summer on a 9,000 square foot plant. The Richmond planning and zoning commission already has given its go-ahead to rezone an area in southwest Richmond to light industrial, but the city council is yet to take action. Salam Awada, owner of AG Sci Tech, said his company plans to use the land to produce a soil conditioner called SOLU-PLKS, which he says mostly contains harmless organic carbon. “In a worse case scenario, the chemical wouldn’t cause algae bloom even if it seeped into a nearby creek,” Awada asserted. “Our plan is to build a biotech facility specializing in soil conditioners and specialty products that are used with fertilizers, but at reduced rates. Our technology and patents are to supplement what the growers use and to make fertilizers use more efficient.” AG Sci Tech already manages about 30,000 acres of potatoes in Idaho, where growers are reducing their NPK inputs by about 20 to 30 percent. “At today’s prices that’s a lot of money, and also we are reducing the amount of fertilizers that the growers are dumping into the environment,” Awaded stated. SOLU-PLKS is based on a patent pending bio-fermentation technology for the use of selected biosurfactants such as glycolipids, glycopeptones, and lipopeptones as nutrients’ solubilizers and stabilizers. It is a new technology applied to the field of plant and micro-organisms growth and nutrition. SOLU-PLKS is recommended for use on all soils and plants and is not crop specific. It targets the nutrients P, K, Ca, and Mg and the micronutrients, and acts as a complexing agent. The result is improvement in the bio-availability of these nutrients to the plants and soil microorganisms. In addition, the high degree of complexation between the nutrients and the stabilizers in SOLU-PLKS effectively reduces nutrients leaching from sandy soils. Studies show that phosphate leaching is reduced by more than 44 percent in sandy soils.