TS201 and TS601 are NewLeaf’s biologicals. They teach corn to defend itself. PowerPlant and NutriCharge are ours, and they are phosphorus nutrition — not pest control. But a plant that is defending itself is building, and building runs on phosphorus. That is why these two ride in the same box.
Worth being blunt about, because the two get muddled. TS201 and TS601 are the biocontrol — EPA-registered biologicals from NewLeaf Symbiotics. NutriCharge and PowerPlant are fertilizer technology. They do not control insects or disease, and we will never tell you they do.
What we will tell you is that the two together are worth more than either on its own, and the reason is simple.
Switching a defense on is not the expensive part. Building the things it defends with is.
New proteins, thicker cell walls, compounds that make a root taste wrong to a larva. The plant has to read the genes, power the synthesis and feed the pathways — and the energy, the machinery that reads the instructions, and the precursors those pathways start from are all phosphate-based.
More root, sooner, means more of the plant colonized. Phosphorus is what drives early root growth — and it is the nutrient least able to move through soil to reach a root on its own.
Root that does not get chewed is root still feeding the plant. Each half protects what the other half paid for.
That is the case for running them together. A biological that primes a plant which cannot fund the response is working against a limit it did not create. A phosphorus program under a crop losing root to rootworm is paying for uptake it will not get. Each one addresses what constrains the other.
AgroTech USA does not run a shelf of biologicals with a different logo each season. In seed-applied biology we back NewLeaf Symbiotics, because the PPFM platform is the only one we have seen with a mode of action we can teach a grower in five minutes and defend in front of an agronomist.
Practically, that shows up in three places. We lead with it — TS201 and TS601 are part of how we recommend a seed-applied program, not an add-on. We carry it properly — PowerPlant’s AC³ carrier is built to keep a living organism viable from the bag to the furrow, which talc and graphite, being desiccants, are not. And we teach it — the three scenes on this page exist because a mode of action nobody understands does not get reordered.
Ride-along, not a new pass. Both add to any PowerPlant variant — Standard, PPFM or TriPhase. No separate trip, no change to how the box is loaded, and viability maintained from bag to soil rather than dried out on the way.
That is the part worth understanding before either product makes sense. TS201 and TS601 are not insecticide and fungicide in the way those words are normally used. They are the same bacterium doing the same job twice — teaching a corn plant to defend itself before it needs to.
The mechanism is called induced systemic resistance, and the reason it matters commercially is timing: a primed plant answers an attack faster and harder than a plant meeting it cold. The scene below walks through how that actually happens.
A first-of-its-kind EPA-registered bioinsecticide. Applied at planting, it colonizes at the root and switches on the plant's own immune response — so the defense is already running before the pest arrives rather than starting from cold.
The advantage across winning trials against the check, which is the region's grower standard practice. Averaged across trial locations.
Across multiple growing seasons, 2023–2024, with more small-plot data available on request.
Trialed with and without corn rootworm pressure present.
After years of lab, greenhouse and field testing before release.
Read the measure carefully. +8.7 bu/ac is win performance — the advantage across the trials that won, not an average across every trial. It is an aggregate from trials with and without rootworm pressure, paired with Terrasym® 450, from large-plot field data. NewLeaf Symbiotics trial data; results may vary.
The active is a PPFMPink-Pigmented Facultative Methylotroph — a beneficial bacterium that lives on and inside plant tissue. It is the technology the whole NewLeaf range is built on. strain. It colonizes the plant from the roots outward, and that colonization triggers a whole-plant response rather than a local one.
Colonization activates induced systemic resistanceThe plant's own defense response, switched on in advance. A primed plant answers an attack faster and harder than one meeting it cold. across the whole plant — so it is braced before anything starts feeding.
Offered treated and untreated roots, 70% of rootworm larvae chose the untreated. Where both were treated, 80% did not commit to either.
Where feeding does happen, treated roots came back harder — more root tips, more total length, and notably more fine root.
Larval choice work: University of Missouri, 2023, n = 120 larvae.
What it is labelled against. Corn rootworm, fall armyworm, root knot nematode, wireworm and aphids — above ground and below. Some listed pests are hit at the egg or larval stage and others later as adults, which can stop pressure reaching the threshold where you would otherwise need a rescue pass.
The same PPFM technology, aimed at disease. Applied at planting it colonizes from the seed, and when conditions finally let a pathogen try, the primed defense launches faster and harder than an unprimed one.
The difference worth understanding is that this is systemic. It protects the whole plant against a range of listed diseases, rather than acting locally where it lands or targeting one pathogen.
| Corn | Tar spot · Southern rust — the two unpredictable, costly ones that arrive late and decide a lot of seasons. Fusarium crown rot is in testing |
| Soybeans | Sclerotinia white mold · Pythium damping off · Rhizoctonia root and stem rot · Fusarium sudden death syndrome |
| Cotton & peanut | Sclerotinia white mold · Pythium damping off · Rhizoctonia root and stem rot · Fusarium wilt |
Soilborne pathogens hit roots and shoots early; the foliar ones move in late. One application at planting covers both ends because the priming does not expire.
It reduces severity; it is not a replacement for your fungicide program. What it changes is where you start from — a plant that has been primed since planting rather than one meeting tar spot cold in August. In a hard year you will still spray.
TS201 and TS601 cover insects and disease. NewLeaf's recommendation is to add their corn biostimulant underneath both, because a better-fed plant defends itself better regardless of pressure.
EPA-registered bioinsecticide. Repellency and regrowth against rootworm, fall armyworm, wireworm, root knot nematode and aphids.
EPA-registered biofungicide. Severity reduction and season-long protection against southern rust, tar spot and crown rot.
A corn-specific biostimulant — a microbial inoculant, not a pesticide. Increases nutrient uptake and abiotic stress tolerance, which is what the trial figures above were generated alongside.
TS201, TS601 and Terrasym® 450 are NewLeaf Symbiotics technologies. What AgroTech USA adds is the carrier that lets them ride in a planter box and still be alive at the other end.
Tell us your acres, your rootworm and disease pressure, and what your phosphorus program looks like now. We will tell you which add-on is worth it on your ground, which is not, and what a strip trial would need to look like to answer it properly.