Biologicals continue to gain momentum and garner questions across the agriculture industry, including consistent performance in real-world conditions. That’s why Mosaic Biosciences™ continued the second season of Frontier Fields™, in an effort to provide authentic, transparent farmer experiences with its biological products. Six new farmers put BioPath® and PowerCoat® to the test on their own operations. With harvest complete, those farmers are now sharing their final results and firsthand insights from the field.
“Last year delivered one of the most challenging growing environments in recent memory,” said Matt Sowder, Director of Field Solutions at Mosaic Biosciences. “Weather extremes, disease pressure, and other challenges tested crops and the biologicals used to support them. We know biological performance isn’t one-size-fits-all, which is why Season 2 of the Frontier Fields program focused on real-world validation. By putting BioPath and PowerCoat to the test across six new, diverse trial locations, we gained valuable insights and were pleased with the results.”
Versatility + Yield
Austin Blair, a farmer from south-central Iowa, faced an abnormally wet season after nearly half a decade of drought. This was Blair’s second season using BioPath on his heavy, silty clay loam soils. In 2025, he applied BioPath as a side-dress around V10 — much later than planned — and still saw an average yield gain of about +4 bu/ac compared to the control.
“We always start with a plan for our season, but there are always obstacles we’ve got to overcome,” said Blair. “BioPath has proven its versatility in all kinds of conditions. We’re in the hands of Mother Nature, and she says yes or no, so versatility is a big thing.
We’ve learned that, even in a wet year, the biological is still working for us. We’ve had a trial in a dry year, now a wet year, so it’s proven its versatility in all kinds of conditions.”
Harmon Wilts from Kerkhoven, Minnesota, also reported a +4 bu/ac yield increase in his in-furrow BioPath trial.
“2025 was a year that was wilder and different than we would have thought going into the season, but ended up respectfully. It was quite different, at least in Minnesota, than we had hoped for and thought for, but it worked out OK at the end,” said Wilts.
Encouraged by BioPath’s versatility, he also decided to do a side-dress trial, which showed a 1- to 2-bushel advantage over its control.
“We really only saw about a bushel difference between our side-dress trial and control, but after we applied in June, we had rain for 12 days,” said Wilts. “But I’m excited to try BioPath again in the future and keep working on it.”
Wilts plans to apply BioPath across six fields next season: three with an in-furrow application and three with a side-dress application.
Adding Return on Investment
Maximizing Return on Fertilizer Investment (ROFI) was critical for farmers across the country in 2025 and will remain important in seasons to come. BioPath and PowerCoat are biological inputs developed to stimulate soil microbial communities that contribute to nutrient use efficiency.
With improved nutrient uptake throughout the growing season, maximizing yield potential becomes more attainable. But yield alone doesn’t always tell the full story. Nebraska farmer Brian Herbek didn’t simply evaluate bushels; he evaluated the full economic picture of his BioPath trial against a high-management grower standard that included a different biological product. While the yield difference slightly favored his grower standard, a deeper look at input costs and returns revealed a different outcome.
“When we came to the end of the season, BioPath lost by eight-tenths of a bushel, which isn’t really a loss because the BioPath actually won by $6.34 an acre if you run the math,” said Herbek.
This broader analysis ultimately showed that even with a slight yield disadvantage, the overall return made BioPath the more profitable choice in Herbek’s operation.
Marc Kaiser, a farmer in north-central Missouri, also saw results that went beyond what yield alone suggested. In his BioPath trial, yield increased by just over a bushel per acre compared to the control. However, when compared to his whole-farm average, the trial yielded about 10 to 12 bu/ac higher.
“Every year is like a science project, and you’re always competing against yourself,” said Kaiser. “You always want to get just 1% better. When you look at the yields year over year and you do see an increase, even if it is a minimal one, it does feel good that you at least controlled the variable you could and made the most of it.”
Still More to Learn
Mosaic Biosciences and Frontier Fields farmers both agree there is still more to learn about how biologicals perform in different soils and conditions. Makenna Frantz farms in Illinois’ highly productive “black dirt,” where not every product can deliver measurable yield gains. Still, in-season observations from her BioPath trial provided valuable insight, even when those differences didn’t translate to final yield.
“BioPath was a couple bushels better, treated versus untreated, but that story isn’t completely true across the whole field,” said Frantz. “That’s where I think there’s a lot of value to be found in this trial. I think really what this tells me is that it doesn’t work on every acre. There’s definitely a right place to put it. Now, we just need to figure out with our management practices where that right place is.”
The season also left Wisconsin farmer Caleb Wolters with more questions. Wolters put PowerCoat, a dry fertilizer coating, to the test in 2025 as a way to potentially improve efficiency without changing his existing fertilizer program.
“We were interested in PowerCoat because it was going on the fertilizer we’re already using, and we were hoping that we could make that investment be a little more efficient and plant-available,” said Wolters. “Yield-wise, we were seeing less than 1 to 2 bushels difference. There wasn’t a large enough difference to say one way or the other.”
Looking back, Wolters faced increased moisture and greater disease pressure, including southern rust, compared to a typical year. While the season created challenges, it didn’t change his interest in continuing to evaluate PowerCoat in 2026.
“We’re going to try PowerCoat again next year to see what might be beneficial to our operation,” said Wolters.
As biologicals continue to evolve, so does the conversation around how and where they fit. Providing these transparent results from real farmers trialing products in the field, Mosaic hopes to change the conversation from one of skepticism to one of optimism. The entire Season 2 series is available to view on FrontierFields.com. Additional trial results for BioPath and PowerCoat can be found at TruResponseWorks.com.
