Meristem Program Paying Off In Iowa’s Challenging 2025
24 October 2025, Ohio: Despite a challenging late growing season for the area, a harvest highlight for Lucas Oster in Montgomery County, Iowa, was a corn on corn plot comparing products from Meristem Crop Performance®.
“We saw a yield advantage with each individual step up with Meristem products and Hopper Throttle® MaxStax™ Corn was definitely the best,” said Lucas Oster, who farms 2,500 acres with his father, Ed, near Elliott, Iowa.
The plot was in its eighth year of corn on corn, and it was planted on April 12, all with the same 111-day hybrid. The plot had four treatments in 12-row entries: control, Meristem’s Revline® Hopper Throttle™ Corn Ether™, the addition of Guard X™*, and Hopper Throttle® MaxStax™ Corn. The whole plot had the same fertility program, with no P and K applied. Excavator® AMS with Cyclestrike™ LR was applied ahead of planting to manage residue and release nutrients. The plot had an aerial fungicide application and Meristem’s Harvestshield™ Complete was applied across all treatments to protect the crop from early season abiotic stress.
“With the untreated control, we had a yield of 218.48. The Revline Hopper Throttle was 224.31,” Oster said. “The Guard X treatment was 227.01 bushels and MaxStax was 241.36 bushels per acre. We were really pleased with that kind of performance, especially in a year when we are seeing so many really low yields for this area.”
After a great start to the growing season, high hopes in Montgomery County, Iowa have turned into a largely disappointing harvest.
“We had a really great planting window and really good conditions early with consistent rain,” Oster said. “But I think the rain in July invited a lot of disease in, and then August turned awfully dry. Then this area has been annihilated by southern rust. It really took the top end of our yield, at least 10% to 15% pretty much everywhere, even where fungicides were applied.”
The stair-stepped yield increases in the plot were in line with the product performance expectations of the treatments, said Shane Brockhoff, Meristem vice president and area director of sales. Each of those treatments are powered by the patented Bio–Capsule Technology™ Delivery System that can combine multiple living biological solutions for convenient deployment through seed fluency at planting.
Revline Hopper Throttle Corn Ether is talc/graphite and micronutrient blend that ensures optimum performance added at the planter. The base pail includes 1.35 pounds of IonLock™ Zinc, plus iron and manganese. Ether™ Enzyme Technology kick-starts the uptake of available soil nutrients and water while maximizing microbial activity, Brockhoff said.
The addition of Guard X to the Revline Hopper Throttle confuses or repels corn rootworm at the root and activates the plant’s immune system to efficiently withstand abiotic stresses, leading to the three-bushel yield bump in the plots.
The big yield bump with the MaxStax Corn treatment came from multiple additional components. Maybe the most notable yield difference-maker, though, on the Oster farm in 2025 was the Prephyte™ ST** biofungicide treatment along with the MaxStax treatment.
“Prephyte ST is a broad spectrum biofungicide that controls many fungal pests. This bacteria lives and grows with the plant roots, so you get season-long biocontrol. Problems like crown rots and lower stem rots can form early in the season and shut down the plant’s xylem and phloem. Then, late in the season when plants are stressed, that’s when these early season crown rot infections take over. There really is not a great way to protect these plants early, other than liquid seed treatments and, at best, those are only offering two- or three-week protection,” Brockhoff said. “Crown rot influences so much in that plant’s health. If the plant can’t move water and nutrients from the roots efficiently all season long, it will be set up for other issues. The plant is going to be more sensitive to any stress, whether it’s disease, late season drought or late season water ponding issues. Keeping that crown healthy early and all season with Prephyte ST is important.”
MaxStax Corn also aids in the reduction of pest and disease pressure with Guard C™. Beauvaria Bassiana (Protectis™) increases microbial activity and promotes plant vigor. Oster was surprised at the consistency of the stands and moisture of the corn on corn plot across the treatments.
“I didn’t see any real differences in standability across the treatments. The corn was very dry, right around 13.5% moisture with pretty decent test weight,” Oster said. “The yield results from these plots really stood out. Even in a tough year, we are firm believers in these products, and it showed up very clearly in the yield results we’re seeing this harvest season.”
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