SILARA N30 / Primary use: pasture / Updated 24 September 2026
Roots, recovery and dry matter: a closer look at the 2025 perennial ryegrass study, with the complete original article available to read and download.
Published study results are a basis for evaluation. This controlled pot experiment tested Optysil on two turf ryegrass cultivars. It did not test SILARA N30, New Zealand grazed pasture, seasonal paddock yield or animal production.
Bio Charge summary: 2 pages · 169 KB. Original published paper: 26 pages · 17.1 MB · Open access, CC BY 4.0.
01 / Mastalerczuk and colleagues, 2025
What the study reported
Mastalerczuk, G., Borawska-Jarmułowicz, B., Sujkowska-Rybkowska, M., Bederska-Błaszczyk, M., Borucki, W. & Dąbrowski, P. (2025). Silicon mitigates the adverse effects of drought on Lolium perenne physiological, morphometric and anatomical characters. PeerJ 13:e18944. Published 12 February 2025. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.18944.
The experiment compared plants with and without a foliar silicon product under well-watered and drought conditions. The reported percentage changes below are pooled main effects across cultivars, water treatments and measurement dates. They are not separate estimates of drought-only or recovery-only gains.
| Measure | Without silicon product | With silicon product | Reported relative change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Root dry mass | 0.24 g/plant | 0.27 g/plant | 12.5% higher |
| Shoot dry mass | 0.22 g/plant | 0.23 g/plant | 4.5% higher |
| Root-to-shoot mass ratio | 1.17 | 1.33 | 13.8% higher |
| Relative water content | 69.8% | 73.2% | 4.9% higher |
Means are rounded as published. Percentage changes are those reported by the authors. Table 1 reports significant silicon main effects at p ≤ 0.01 for these four measures. The relative water-content change is about 4.9% relative, equivalent to 3.4 percentage points from the displayed means.
The response was not uniform. The authors state that, within drought treatments, silicon did not significantly differentiate most morphometric features. Shoot number and specific root length had no significant overall silicon effect. The headline dry-mass percentages should therefore not be presented as a guaranteed pasture response.
02 / How the experiment was run
Controlled pots, drought and rewatering
Plants and conditions
Two perennial ryegrass turf cultivars, Bokser and Stadion, were grown in a controlled phytotron using loamy-sand Luvisol soil. The randomized design combined two cultivars, two water conditions and two silicon levels, with three replicate pots per combination and measurement date and eight plants per pot (reported n = 24).
Stress and recovery
Drought began at tillering, 45 days after sowing, by withholding water for 21 days. Well-watered plants were maintained at 70% capillary water capacity. Plants were assessed after 7, 14 and 21 days, and after a further 14 days of rewatering.
The paper examines water status, photosynthetic measurements, biomass allocation, root morphology and root anatomy. The authors observed root-tissue changes and interpreted these as supporting drought tolerance. These short-term observations do not demonstrate persistent dry-matter gains in a grazed paddock.
03 / Product and programme matter
The 100 g SiO₂/ha figure was per application
The study used Optysil (Intermag), described as containing 200 g SiO₂/L as sodium metasilicate and 24 g Fe/L as Fe-EDTA. The stated dilution was 0.5 L product in 200 L water/ha. Plants received 2.5 mL spray solution per pot, with foil shielding the soil.
Four sprays were scheduled: seven days before drought, at the start of drought, and seven and fourteen days later. Earlier harvest groups necessarily received fewer applications.
| Programme | Product volume/ha | SiO₂ mass/ha | Iron mass/ha |
|---|---|---|---|
| One application | 0.5 L | 100 g | 12 g |
| Full four-spray course | 2.0 L | 400 g | 48 g |
SILARA N30 is an amorphous colloidal silica concentrate, with a typical pasture label rate of 300 mL/ha. A comparison of gross SiO₂ loading is only arithmetic: it does not establish equivalent chemistry, availability, uptake or performance. The study also supplied iron and did not include an iron-only control.
This paper does not validate a SILARA N30 programme. Its product, spray frequency, cultivars and growing conditions differ. Do not substitute the study treatment or its four-spray schedule for the current SILARA N30 product instructions.
04 / Relevance to Bio Charge
Evaluating SILARA N30 in pasture
The study provides a reason to investigate a silicon approach. Demonstrating SILARA N30 performance requires replicated local comparisons of treated and untreated pasture under otherwise matched management.
- Measure seasonal dry-matter yield, drought response and recovery, root traits, feed quality and crop safety.
- Record product rates and timing, soil fertility, weather, grazing and other inputs.
- Evaluate repeatability across sites and seasons before making product-specific yield or economic claims.
The paper contains no SILARA N30 trial, farm-scale yield guarantee, animal-production result or cost-benefit assessment.
Read the full article
The complete published paper is freely available below. The Shopify-hosted PDF is an unchanged copy of the original publication.
© Mastalerczuk and colleagues 2025. Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Original article unchanged; this Bio Charge page and its research brief are summaries and adaptations. No author or publisher endorsement of SILARA N30 is implied.