Yucca Plant Extract 101

Yucca: A flowering desert plant, in the plant family Asparagaceae. It is native to the southwest United States, Baja California, and Mexico. Known as the ‘tree of life’ by Native Americans for its many uses including health promoting benefits. Yucca extracts have been used for centuries in folk medicine to treat a wide variety of inflammatory disorders, including headaches, gonorrhea, arthritis, and rheumatism.

Yucca Plant Extract has many uses: As a foaming agent in soft drinks, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and as an animal feed additive. It is cited to hold positive effects for livestock growth, feed efficiency, and health. And most importantly for gardeners, Yucca is equipped with many benefits for plant growth, and soil health.

Yucca extract benefits for your plants are wide ranging and powerful.

In addition to other beneficial compounds, Yucca contains what are known as steroidal saponins; natural foaming agents with dispersant and coating properties that have anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-oxidant, and anti-bacterial properties.

Saponins are a natural surfactant, or wetting agent. This is one way yucca extract helps plants. Surfactants break the surface tension of liquids; allowing them to be more easily distributed and absorbed.

Why is Yucca Plant Extract Important For Plants?

Increases plant cell wall permeability and dispersal of liquids.
Protects against plant pathogens.
Reduces plant stress from drought, heat, and salinity.
Increases soil infiltration and absorption of water and nutrients.

How Does Yucca Plant Extract Boost Your Grow?

Nutrient and Water Use Efficiency

When used as a Plant Biostimulant, Yucca Extract allow for increased mobility of nutrients and water across plant and soil surfaces.

Plants gain many positive benefits from the increased dispersal of water, nutrients, and other beneficials through soils. The saponin content in Yucca chemically alters liquid molecules, breaking the cohesion of chemical bonds. This, in effect makes the liquids, ‘more liquid’. This allows water and nutrients to get to where plants gain the maximum benefits, the root zone.

When used in foliar sprays, the saponins in Yucca act to ‘soften’ plant cell walls. Water and nutrients are then allowed to be spread over a greater area more efficiently. When used in combination with Plant Biostimulant or fertilizer compounds, this increased cell wall permeability results in greater absorption of nutrients and beneficials, maximizing nutrient and water use effectiveness. In other words, Yucca helps plants get what they need.

Biocontrol

Numerous studies have shown the effectiveness of Yucca Extracts in treating seed borne and other bacterial and fungal plant pathogens.

Common plant diseases such as Fusarium, Leaf Spot, Pythium, Alternaria, and others have been successfully controlled by treatment with Yucca. Yucca Extract has been shown to have a more broad anti-fungal effect when compared to commercially available fungicides. And with organic growing methods being implemented, these results have shown to be equally or in some cases more effective than conventional growing practices.

Seed treatment with Yucca was also found to improve seed quality and plant growth in the form of increased number of normal seedlings, seedling emergence and seedling vigor. The effectiveness of Yucca Extract as a Biocontrol for plant pathogens is a safe, natural alternative to conventional methods such as copper sulfate and other synthetics; and results in increased plant health and growth.

Plant Stress Tolerance

Stresses such as heat, drought, and salinity are common causes of plant damage and loss. Yucca, as a native desert plant, has developed mechanisms to tolerate and manage these stress conditions.

Saponins allow for water and nutrients to be more evenly absorbed by plants and soils. Which allow your plants to deal with stresses more easily. Saponins help get the water and nutrients plants need to where they benefit the most.

In addition to saponins, Yucca Plant Extracts contain other compounds that protect and improve plant health and performance. Polyphenols are Antioxidants that have been identified to assist plants in tolerating various stress conditions.

Polyphenols such as resveratrol, larixinol, and yuccaols act as antioxidants, and serve plant protecting functions. These compounds scavenge for free-radicals, and reduce the numbers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) present in soil. These ROS act as signaling molecules when plants are under stress, and their accumulation can lead to plant loss. The antioxidants present in Yucca Extracts allow plants to respond to stress and at the same time benefit from the regulation of potentially harmful substances.

Soil Health

Getting water and nutrients to a plants root zone is an obvious way to benefit plants.

Yucca Plant Extract is a Plant Biostimulant that can be used to improve soil health and plant growth. Yucca improves permeability at the soil surface, as well as nutrient use efficiency at the root zone. Yucca extracts increase the dispersal of liquids, and allows for higher infiltration rates and improved soil and plant performance.

There are many complex sugars in Yucca that are a major benefit to living soils. This helps to create the conditions for a diverse and vibrant soil ecosystem. These sugars feed and energize soil microbes, allowing these beneficials to multiply and work with plants to gather nutrients, protect against pathogens, and grow better plants.

Simplify the Science

Every growing situation is unique. Adding a diverse and potent concentration of Plant Biostimulants maximizes your likelihood of success.

Yucca Extract for plants are a key component in GreenEden Mycorrhizal and Inoculant Products. Enabling the powerful and concentrated formulations to get to where they have maximum benefit. Increased root zone dispersal, foliar absorption, and soil health.