All About Dune™

What is it?

Dune is stabilized monosilicic acid. Silicon (the element from which monosilicic acid is derived) is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust– it is everywhere– and thus it comes as no surprise that silicon is a hugely beneficial element for plant health and for the health of most organisms on earth. Plants often uptake this element in the form monosilicic acid (also known as orthosilicic acid), because it is the most predominant bioavailable form of silicon in soils. 

Depending on whether you are talking about it to scientists, regulators, farmers, or marketers, you might hear Silicon described differently. Plant scientists consider it a nutrient, and although it is currently classified as non-essential,  it has a very vocal group of supporters that think it should be classified as essential nutrient, or maybe as “quasi-essential”. To make matters more complicated, from a regulatory perspective it is considered a “beneficial substance” or maybe even a “biostimulant”. 

You can spend all day debating what this amazing element actually is but really, what we believe matters most at Impello is what it does, and the list of what it does is long. Expert farmers across the globe know just how much and in how many ways it impacts the health, strength, growth rate, and outcomes of our crops.

What does Dune™ do for plants?

Silicon is naturally present in many, if not all, soil ecosystems, but the amount in any given environment and the bioavailability of its various forms can vary immensely with soil composition, pH, weathering, and how the land or growth medium has been previously used. While it might not be considered an essential macro or micronutrient in the same way as nitrogen or iron are, respectively, highly bioavailable forms of silicon have been shown to rapidly strengthen the basic unit of plant architecture: the cell wall. (There are less bioavailable forms on the market, mainly a group of compounds known as silicates, but they tend to take much longer to strengthen tissues.) 

The result of cell wall strengthening via monosilicic acid (bioavailable silicon) is that plants have stronger growth habits and so may be less prone to lodging (otherwise known as plants falling over) and breakage; and that they are more resistant to all kinds of pressures faced in growing environments simply because their tissues are more resilient. 

Growers also tell us that Dune has enormous impacts on the quality of stock plants they use for vegetative propagation and that cuttings are not only easier to root, but also subsequently develop stronger root systems. We’ve seen this in our own internal rooting trials. 

In natural environments, silicon is present because of ongoing mineral degradation. If the concentration of bioavailable forms of silicon is high enough, then plants will uptake it and integrate it into their tissues in the form of cellulosic structures such as roots, stems, and leaves. 

When these structures have higher concentrations of Silicon in their tissues, in addition to being more upright, plants treated with monosilicic acid have been shown to be more resistant to chemical stresses such as those that come from salinity, heavy metals, and nutrient imbalance, and also more tolerant of climactic conditions such as UV, drought, heat, and frost. In many cases, the benefits of silicon appear to derive from direct strengthening of tissues by silicon incorporation, but it is also thought that silicon can aid in the uptake and distribution of elements like calcium that have traditionally been considered immobile. 

There is still much to be learned about all the different ways in which silicon can benefit the traits most important to growers, but we’ve yet to see a crop that did not derive some benefit from monosilicic acid. Dune is applied at rates that growers find shockingly low, and for a simple element, silicon does more by itself than many products do with complicated formulas and high input rates.