Matching Nutrient Availability with Nutrient Demand

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Welcome back to this week's episode of the EZ Ag Podcast, where innovative farming meets practical solutions.

I'm your host, Matt Long, and today we're going to dig into how matching nutrient demand and nutrient availability is a season-long process that requires early planning and in-season tweaking to create maximum yield.

But first, just a quick note. Mark your calendars for our upcoming Field Day, August 18 at 6:30 p.m. at St. Anthony's Parish Hall in Leoti. We'll be talking about how yield is built from the ground up and giving you a glimpse into some of the products and research we're using to help you maximize yield on every field on your farm.

One thing I think we need to focus on a little bit more when talking about nutrient availability and nutrient demand is how feeding the crop when it wants to eat is important.

This could be similar to a toddler or young child. When our son Ryan was around three years old, he maybe ate only one full meal a day. Even though we put food on his plate at every meal, he wasn't hungry. And when he was, he ate everything we put in front of him.

Your crop is the same. Although it does have some constant need for nutrition, like a growing toddler, there are times when its nutrient demand is much higher. At those times, it's important to feed it.

Probably one of the biggest mistakes I think we make in crop production is assuming that because nutrients are in the field or show up on a soil test, they're just available to the crop when it needs them.

High yields are not simply about how many nutrients are applied or available. High yields occur when nutrient availability and nutrient demand intersect at exactly the right time.

Let's talk about how yield is built during periods of rapid nutrient demand, specifically for corn.

Nutrient uptake, especially early in the season from VE, or emergence, up to about V5, is very modest. As we approach V5 through V10 or V12, nutrient demand really increases in terms of pounds of nutrients the crop needs every day.

Then, as it reaches V10 or V12 and moves through tasseling and grain fill, that demand levels out a little bit. It doesn't keep growing, but it remains elevated before tapering off at the end when grain fill is finished.

As we approach that V5 through V10 or V12 stage, when nutrient demand is increasing dramatically, we have a lot of things going on in the plant.

One of those is the determination of maximum ear size. First comes the maximum number of kernel rows around the ear, followed by the maximum number of kernels long that ear can be. That happens around V4 to V5 for kernel rows and about V8 to V10 for kernel length.

It's important to understand what nutrients we need during those time periods and what we can do to influence nutrient availability.

Another time when nutrient availability is really paramount is during grain fill. I think we tend to forget about the very late grain-fill period.

The crop starts remobilizing nutrients from within its canopy. It typically draws micronutrients from the top leaves down into the ear. It draws macronutrients from the lower leaves up into the ear and creates proteins, packing that kernel full of dense nutrition.

A lot of nutrition moves from within the plant during grain fill, but still about 30 to 40 percent of the nutrients needed for grain fill are being pulled up through the soil or applied to the crop during that time.

It's important to think about how yield is built during these periods of rapid nutrient demand, where that yield comes from, and what nutrients are needed.

One of the questions becomes: What nutrients will be available when the crop asks for them?

That leads into the next point, which is the availability of previously applied nutrients.

What we're talking about here are nutrients that showed up on a soil test throughout the season or last fall when soil tests were pulled, as well as nutrients that were applied after soil testing and before planting.

Many nutrients are applied months before the crop actually needs them.

There are different mechanisms of loss for each nutrient. Nitrogen and sulfur, for example, can be lost through leaching.

This season, we haven't had significant amounts of rainfall where I think leaching would be a major issue with nitrogen. But if nitrogen was applied in November, December, or January, how much volatilization occurred after that application?

A lot of guys use products to help reduce volatilization, and they try to time applications ahead of snow or rainfall. But let's be honest—between October and April, it hardly rained at all.

If we had 50, 60, 80, or 100 pounds of nitrogen streamed onto the soil surface ahead of this corn crop, how much of that nitrogen was lost during that time period?

Another thing we can talk about, especially with micronutrients, is that our soils generally have pretty high calcium levels. Calcium is antagonistic toward many micronutrients. It likes to tie them up in the soil and make them less available to the plant.

When we think about these mechanisms of loss, whether for nitrogen, sulfur, or micronutrients, we have to ask ourselves:

Is my fertility program designed around when I have time to apply nutrients, or when my crop will demand them?

If it's built around my schedule, will those nutrients still be available during peak uptake? And what can I do to improve nutrient availability during those peak uptake times, especially from V5 through the early stages of grain fill?

There are also a couple of things we can do to supplement nutrient applications.

One of those is foliar nutrition. We've been working with some foliar products for a couple of years, trying to determine the right timing and the right rates and how to use them to drive yield.

One thing to understand about foliar products is that they are not intended to replace a fertility program.

Your crop has a constant demand for nutrients and fertilizer. You need some base level of nutrition in the field so that crop can take up nutrients daily and continue its normal function of creating the plant and the yield you'll eventually harvest.

Foliar nutrition is designed to supplement nutrient demand during critical periods.

One of those critical periods is V5 to V8. Nutrient applications during that time support ear length and kernel row development. They also support the rapid vegetative growth the crop is going through.

Later in the summer, as we move toward fall, foliar nutrition can support reproductive growth and grain fill.

Everybody has their own preferred products, but a couple I've really come to like over the last few years include FullSun from BW Fusion.

This product is targeted at enhancing vegetative growth and helping the crop utilize the full amount of sunlight it receives.

With a FullSun application, we typically see increased leaf width and length, increased stalk diameter, and, although it's harder to see, increased root development.

A bigger, wider leaf captures more sunlight, which increases photosynthesis. Through photosynthesis, plants fix carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen from the air and convert them into amino acids, sugars, and root exudates.

The plant releases those exudates back into the soil. Those exudates feed soil microbes, whether native microbes or microbes you've applied. They also signal those microbes regarding which nutrients the plant needs most.

Some microbes create enzymes that release specific nutrients from the soil. The exudates help direct that process.

I really like FullSun because I feel like we're feeding the crop, the crop is feeding the soil biology, and that biology is feeding the crop to create yield.

Another couple of products I like are AmiNo from BW Fusion and NKBS from Radical Crop Performance.

I've mostly used them during grain fill to enhance nitrogen efficiency and improve the crop's ability to convert nitrogen into yield.

From the NKBS standpoint, we're getting some nitrogen, potassium, boron, and sulfur.

Boron is critical for pollen development, pollen shed, and kernel retention, helping reduce tip-back. Potassium is important for overcoming abiotic stresses like heat and drought.

Nitrogen and sulfur are essential for protein synthesis.

The goal of using these products is to put nutrients in front of the plant when it can use them to create the greatest yield response.

FullSun enhances leaf size and overall plant growth during early vegetative stages. AmiNo and NKBS support reproductive development and help the crop overcome stress during grain fill.

Shifting gears a little, let's talk about nutrient release from a biological standpoint.

I touched on this with FullSun and root exudation, but let's better understand some of the carbon cycling, residue breakdown, and nutrient mineralization biologicals that we may be using.

One thing to focus on is that there's a lag time between application of these products and nutrient release. Typically, that's around 45 days after application or incorporation.

It's important to understand that lag and align applications with crop development so that nutrient release occurs when the crop needs it most.

Biological fertility is becoming a bigger part of agriculture. On my own farm, I've seen advantages to reducing synthetic fertilizer use and increasing biological activity.

We're constantly soil testing to make sure we're not "mining" nutrients from the soil and that nutrient levels remain balanced.

It's an area that's becoming more popular and one we need to continue learning about. If we're using biologicals, we need to understand the lag time between application and nutrient availability so we can time them correctly.

Rather than asking how much nutrient is in the soil, we should be asking how much of that nutrient the plant can actually access today through the biology we're using.

Finally, let's talk briefly about building a season-long nutrient availability plan.

There are three key ways to keep nutrients available to your crop.

The first is preserving nutrients that have already been applied. Here, we want to remember the 4R approach to crop nutrition: the right source, at the right rate, at the right time, and in the right place.

When we do that, we're maximizing the efficiency of the nutrients we're applying.

The second is supplementing crop nutrition during peak demand periods. This involves strategic foliar applications timed to crop growth stages and yield development.

The third is increasing nutrient release from the soil. This is a function of improving biological activity through carbon cycling, mineralization, and overall soil function.

The best nutrition programs don't rely on a single application. They layer multiple approaches to keep nutrients available throughout the season.

At Axis Seed and through the Max Yield System, we're constantly focused on one question:

How do we maximize yield through a systems approach to crop production?

One way we do that is by keeping nutrient availability aligned with crop demand.

Yield isn't determined by how many pounds of nutrients are applied. Yield is determined by how many pounds of nutrients are taken up by the plant and converted into yield.

When we consistently match nutrient demand with nutrient availability, that's when we begin capturing maximum yield potential.

That's all for today. I'm your host, Matt Long.

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