How Excess Nitrogen Creates Yield Drag | John Kempf and Advancing Eco Agriculture

Really glad to see you all here I've been looking forward to this webinar this afternoon and the process of going through the webinar and putting everything together made me realize that um one it's it's inaccurate for us to talk about nitrogen and two um or nitrogen as this thing because in fact all these different forms of nitrogen behave so differently that we Should really be talking about nitrate versus ammonia versus amino acids Etc but it also made me realize that if we really want to get into how nitrogen creates yiel drag and all of the

uh interesting effects and side effects that it has on plants that we often don't consider that could be a 10hour 10 1 hour long webinars rather than just one so there's a lot that didn't get Included today but we got plenty here um Phil I got a message from Adon McLure that he can't hear me at all can you just verify that you can hear me we did a check earlier I think it should be working yeah I can hear you all right I think it might be on your end Don but thanks for the

heads up actually Phil you might need to text him that because he surely can't hear me saying That all right we're going to kick things off Welcome Friends to our webinar today where we're going to be talking about how nitrogen creates yield drag what the mechanisms are for that and uh that contribute to that there is so much in this topic and this uh this conversation really has evolved out of the last 15 years of experience of working with um a different type of Nutrition management system where we have uh one of the key Principles

that we've worked with and the way that we've managed attrition at a E A is we want to have nutrition we want to have plants absorbing nutrition from biology instead of from mineral or ionic sources of nutrients soluble sources of nutrients and over the last 15 years we've observed lots of interesting things happen that when plants begin absorbing uh bacterial proteins and amino acids and peptides directly from The soil profile they begin expressing themselves differently they begin behaving differently and this has led to a lot of study a lot of research uh lots of efforts

to try to connect the dots and understand what's happening and what's going on inside plant tissues and this topic this whole topic of nitrogen nitrogen interactions with other nutrients um is much broader and much Deeper than we can get into in a 1-hour webinar so um we've I'm kind of I'm going to go provide an overview of the highlights of some of the big picture pieces as we understand them right now that uh really impact plant plant physiology and and can dramatically increase crop yields once we start managing nitrogen differently um I've included a number

of of um references and citations in the presentation but there's many more things I'm going to Talk about that I've probably missed including references for if you want to dig deeper I would suggest a a first place starting point is to start with marner's mineral nutrition of higher plants I'm going to grab my copy here all of you many of you I'm sure have seen this or have heard me talk about in the past um I was rereading it again yesterday and this morning in preparation for this article and the chapter on nitrogen is just

simply Fascinating but of course we've learned lots of new things since this book was published uh we've learned lots of new things around ropy and how plants utilize nutrients inside their cells um in addition to this book if there's a lot of biblography to follow up on here but I would also suggest um Gerald pac's book um cells gels and the engines of life and uh what was the other one that was in my mind oh James White's papers on RIS ofi so we're going to touch on a couple of those as we dive through

this but U the short version is when you think about nitrogen the the common frame of reference that everyone uses is if you want more yield you put on more nitrogen we don't think about nitrogen creating a yield drag effect but in fact it does and it can be very significant and um so we have the the topics I'll be talking about today are um at first glance they may be appear to They may appear to be counterintuitive but when you really dig in and understand what's going on behind them they start making a lot

of sense so with that I'm uh introduction I'm just going to Dive Right In there's um there's a lot that there just simply wasn't enough room to include so I'm going to try to move pretty quickly and if you have any questions for me type them into the Q&A box I'm going to try to leave plenty of Time for Q&A at the end and uh dig into any topics that you have or any questions that you have I would only ask that you keep your questions focused to the topic on uh nitrogen and nitrogen interactions

with imp plants uh and within soil biology and and how to make the overall system work uh because given the the depth of that topic of what we could talk about uh I don't want to go too far off track from that so um with that I'm going to dive into the screen Share and let's talk about nitrogen creating yield drag so quick overview I want to quickly touch on the nitrogen cycle and how it functions in soil and plant ecosystems as it's understood or misunderstood today uh briefly touch on rofy and then give a

quick overview on how nitrate creates yield drag and and this this topic as because there was as soon discovered there's so much to this topic I needed to cut things out so um This webinar is focused specifically on nitrate for the most part uh we could have parallel conversations about ammonium and about other forms of nitrogen but we're really laser focusing in on nitrate because it is the form of nitrogen that has the greatest yield drag effect by far and secondly it's the form of n nitrogen that is most commonly absorbed in highest proportion by

most crops and uh I'll expand on that in a bit here Then I'll want to describe just quickly how microbial proteins increase yields and do not have a yield drag effect and then how as you're managing the transition whatever your current nitrogen management uh protocol may be how do you get to a place where nitrogen doesn't cause a yield drag but does in fact give you the yield increase that you looking for and that you're expecting so um when we look at the nitrogen cycle you've all uh seen Diagrams similar to this I'm sure that

describes the overarching nitrogen cycle as it's moved into the soil through nitrogen fixation process by um different types of nitrogen fixing bacteria rhizobium and aoda and so forth and then goes through the nitrification process where it switches from reduced forms to oxidized forms of nitrogen which is uh specifically ends up as being nitrate and this this diagram as it is as it exists here is slightly Incomplete this is one of the better nitrogen cycle diagrams that I've found online but what is missing is it doesn't yet include the bacterial the plant's capacity to absorb bacterial

nitrogen or to absorb entire bacterial cells as described by the ropi process by Dr James White so that's an important clarification important distinction that I want to make that this nitrogen cycle while quite thorough is still Missing the rise ofi component and by the way way that's also why when I talk about this book mineral nutrition of higher plants the riseof Fiji cycle is also missing from this currently described understanding of plant absorption of nutrients so the rise of Fiji cycle um I really wish we could be live and I could see you in person

so that I could ask for a show of hands of how many people haven't heard of the rise of Fiji cycle I've been talking About this for the last couple of years it's become much more widely known so uh while I'll just describe briefly we just say briefly is that Dr James White at Ruckers University along with a number of his colleagues have described how plants can absorb nitrogen or absorb nutrients generally from bacterial cells where they are absorbing entire bacteria moving them throughout the plant's vascular tissue and the plant cells are absorbing these entire

Bacterial cells through various processes but one is including a process called endocytosis the short version is very simple the summary is simple the summary is that we can provide I believe this is not Dr White's perspective uh or his endorsement but what we've observed based on the uh field observations over a decade and a half now um we believe that plants can absorb the majority of their nitrogen requirement and their Total nutrient requirement through this ropic process and when I say the majority I'm talking upwards of 90% so it's true that in a functioning living

bacterial soil and fungal soil where you have vigorous microbial populations you will always have tiny Trace Amounts of nitrate and ammonium but in the healthiest soils that's all that it will be it will be a trace amount it'll be less than 5% of the total nitrogen in the soil profile Will be in the form of ammonium or nitrate the majority is contained inside bacterial cells and inside soil microbial populations that's exactly where we want it because in in this form it's not water soluble it doesn't leech and it's available for plants to absorb even when

you have drought stress when you have limited water so um I am really excited about uh the discovery or the the elucidation the description of the rise of Agy cycle that Dr White and his Colleagues have described um I've had him on the podcast he's done a couple of we ARS there's lots more information available online around this process but the the bottom line for the purpose of this webinar is that it's possible to supply upwards of 90% of a crops nitrogen requirement using this process and that is how you will consistently produce the highest

yields and the highest quality once this starts happening when I say the highest yields I'm not talking about a 2% or 3% yield increase what we what we have observed are significant yield increases once plants start getting nutrition from this process so this is the ultimate end goal and um I want to describe a bit at the end of this webinar how we achieve that and how we get to that end goal when we look at the energy requirements um I just find this intriguing that if we want to for Commercial U ammonia fixation we're

the hab Bosch process is op operating at 500° C under tremendous pressures and it's interesting that bacterial enzymes can synthesize this these same and can also fix nitrogen but at common temperatures and pressures it's fascinating the tremendous energy that can be focused through these bacterial processes one of the key pieces is if we want to have the rise of AG cycle Functional and capable of supplying a significant amount of the crop's nitrogen requirement we must have good gas exchange in the throughout the soil profile the soil has to be able to breathe has to be

able to inhale atmospheric air that contains 70% oxygen and exhale air that has 20 to 30,000 parts per million CO2 for green plants to absorb without that natural inhaling and Exhaling you you can't maintain the quantity the a large enough population of bacteria to fix enough nitrogen to supply what the crops requirements are so uh here's a quick overview of the different oxidation states of mineral nitrogen or chemical nitrogen all the way from ammonium on the left going through uh to nitrate on the right and uh we can see lower left lower right you have

the reduced versus the oxidized forms which is something I've Been speaking about quite a bit over the last couple of years but um the point that I want to make and the reason I put this up here is to illustrate why we should not be just talking about nitrogen in addition this is the mineral forms of nitrogen but then you also have amino acids amino sugars peptides proteins bacterial cells um Ura and Amin nitrogen you have all these this array of organic forms of nitrogen and plants can absorb the Entire Spectrum however the types of

the form of nitrogen that they absorb has a significant impact on that plant's future performance so one of the things that we've observed I had this experience when I was early days just starting out doing consulting work probably 12 or 13 years ago working with a watermelon farmer in Texas and um we had put together a nutritional Protocol this was in fact I think before we had aea products so we were using um industry products that were available in the marketplace and the early on the season once we got to the bloom period or even

uh shortly through after the bloom period once we have uh tennis ball siiz fruit the grower was just freaking out about how small the plants were we had the the plastic wasn't even covered yet and we already had tennis ball siiz Fruit and the concern was that we didn't have enough vegetation didn't have enough uh Leaf surface area in order to produce enough fruit and to produce a large fruit well that was not what happened uh that crop which never even when it was fully mature when we went through harvesting there was still visible plastic

a lot of visible plastic i' would say we had some in the neighborhood of 65 to 70% coverage of The plastic at that point that was the highest yielding Watermelon Crop that that farmer had ever produced up to that point and still is amongst his top yields on the farm today and I've experienced this phenomena over and over again um specifically now I need to make some distinctions here um there's there's three different crop types in the way that crops Express themselves you have a Vegetative crop let's say alala or spinit or kale you have

what we call a single fruiting crop which would be a small grains or corn for example where all the blossoming and pollination happens in a very condensed window of time in a matter of a few days or a week at most and then you have the extended uh or what I call the multi-ring crops which would be like watermelons and tomatoes where you have blossoming and pollination for an Extended period of a couple of weeks or maybe a month and it is really it's this last group that I'm talking most about uh in in for

this particular for example um this crop this group of crops which blossoms and pollinates for an extended window soybeans would be in this group as well you will often find the highest yielding crops have the least vegetative biomass why is that true it's true Because usually what we have come to perceive as common and normal for these types of crops is excessive vegetative growth triggered specific by nitrate that reduces reproduction so this watermelon field even though it had a relatively small amount of vegetation based on the farmers's historical experience it had enough Leaf in enough

Leaf surface area to fill a lot of fruit and it had really these plants had Really strong reproduction uh they trying to recall now I think we harvested an average of 3.2 melons per per plant on that field which was 50% above the historical nor forms so how does nitrate create yield drag five points or maybe six here first excess of vegetation it increases the crop's water requirements significantly as I want to point out it drains a plant's energy which is again is counterintuitive we're Used to thinking about putting on nitrogen we get this tremendous

surge of plant growth so it increases plant energy right in fact it doesn't do that it drains a plant of energy I'll describe why um it reduces nutrient absorption here's an interesting one to think about it increases disease and it creates a pronounced tendency towards premature death so let's unwrap each of these let's talk about the water requirement as a jumping off Place there is a tremendous amount of water required for the plant when it absorbs nitrate nitrogen for two reasons um the first is that when plants absorb nitrate nitrogen and they convert that there

is it's difficult to speak in generalities here because there's variation between different plant species but broadly speaking most agricultural crops convert the majority of their nitrate in the upper parts of The plant in the vegetative parts of the plant not in the root system and this so you get nitrate being absorbed from the roots from the soil water moving up into the leaves and the conversion process happens in the leaves from nitrate to Ami nitrogen then to amino acids and proteins and so forth and that the the first the initial steps in the nitrate conversion

process to Amin nitrogen require a lot of water it takes three molecules of water for every Molecule of nitrogen or of nitrate that the plant absorbs and in addition to that when the plant is absorbing nitrate and it's moving moving into the um upper parts of the of the plant and being stored in the vaces inside the cells it also creates weak watery cells which lead to all kinds of problems including increased transpiration so it takes more water because the plant loses water more easily the elevator levels of nitrate um Reduce the plant's ability to

control the stamata and the plant starts losing a lot more water so the short version is if you give plants uh nitrate it's going if plants absorb a lot of their nitrogen in the form of nitrate it's going to greatly increase the plant's water requirement let's look at what happens when plants absorb nitrate let's let's look at what happens in the risos spere so this is uh the first paragraph is a direct quote from this Book metal nutrition of higher plants a direct reference says as ammonium or nitrate comprises about 80% of the total cations

or anions taken up by the plantet and I'm this is um I suspect it's not stated in this reference but I suspect it's referring to 80% of the atomic weight or of the molecular weight because obviously in terms of actual numbers probably wouldn't be that high it has a strong impact on the uptake of other cations and anions on cellular pH Regulation and on risos spere ph now why would the form of nitrogen influence risos feere pH because when the plant absorbs either ammonium or nitrate for one of them it releases a proton and for

the other it gains protons so simple way to say it is to say that when plants absorb ammonium it acidifies the pH in the rizosphere so you will drop the pH right around the root system and you can take a soil that Has a pH of 75 or eight that's very alkaline and you can have a RIS ofhere pH of 3.5 to 4 which is very valuable for increasing nutrient availability so you can get a lot of calcium availability and Trace mineral availability in these acidic soils right around the risos spere however when the plant

absorbs nitrate the opposite happens and this is a such a fundamental common problem across so much of Agriculture is that when you have uh now let's say you have a soil that appears to have a a functional and a well balanced bulk soil PH it's 6.2 to 6.4 somewhere in that range and you would think the soil biology and everything is working really well when nitrogen fertilizers are applied to such a soil and they go through the nitrification process the plant ends up absorbing the majority of its nitrogen in the form of nitrate you can

actually have an alkal Zone in the risos spere where soil PHS are upwards of 7.5 as as high as eight or greater and you can imagine or maybe you can't that has a tremendous negative impact on the plant's ability to absorb other nutrients when this happens when plants are absorbing lots of nitrate from the soil that means they will do a very poor job of absorbing calcium they'll do a very poor job of absorbing uh Manganese copper iron Cobalt um zinc to some degree and Boron so there's all these trace minerals silicon there's other um

elements that are involved here as well but the short version is simple we can simply say that when plants absorb nitrate nitrogen it alkalizes the risos spere ph and greatly reduces the plant's ability to absorb other nutrients so if you want to create a plant you know in society at large here I believe many of you that are here and that listen to the content that we've put out historically we when we look at public health and and the challenges that are present in our population throughout North America and to some degree um in all

of Western civilizations um but particularly here in North America we have a problem that many people have full bellies and are starving they do not have when I say they're starving they're starving for Good nutrition we have a lot of empty carbohydrates we have an abundance of carbohydrates but not not good nutrition to go with it and so we have an obesity emic and all these challenges with degenerative illnesses like heart disease and diabetes and stroke and cancer the list goes on and on if you want to create a plant like that you feed it

nitrate nitrate for plants is the equivalent of empty carbohydrates for people you get Lush Vegetative growth lots of biomass but without good nutrition without proper nutrients without the proper that that plant needs for it to be healthy so this um this has been well understood for decades this is not new information but it's just surprising to me that it's not more widely discussed and and talked about um nitrate produces weak cells and weak cell Membranes so fundamentally it is weak cell membranes that are one of the foundational uh requirements you know when you when we

talk about the disease triangle there's three components of the disease triangle um there is a potential pathogen a susceptible host and a proper environment we don't give enough consideration to what is the definition of a susceptible host a susceptible host is not just a random tomato plant Because we know that some tomato plants are resistant to one disease and other tomato plants of a different variety are susceptible to the disease so what defines a susceptible host is partially the terrain the the internal construction and the nutritional integrity and the microbiome Integrity of that plant and

weak cell membranes are one of the fundamentals that Define a susceptible Host for many many different diseases um so often when we have bacterial infections uh and fungal infections some types of viruses we find that we have weak watery cell membranes from excessive nitrate application and this is also the foundation of why some crops die down early or they they die prematurely if you have a potato crop that has excessive levels of nitrate that potato crop will become Infected with verticillium and it'll die down when the potatoes have barely reached the mature stage of of

the final Harvest or the final Harvest size that you want to harvest if they don't have excessive nitrates they often will not contract verticy and they'll stay green and continue to grow right up until Frost so this is a difference between how plants will Express themselves differently based on whether they're absorbing nitrogen in the form of Nitrate or other forms of nitrogen like Ura and ammonium or bacterial proteins um and then I think many of you are also aware that you have weak when you have weak watery cells those are the foundation of most most

fruit storage problems so if you have storage problems with um or Calcium deficiency problems like uh Blossom and rot and corking and bitter pit um those are fundamentally uh weak water cells and you think about those diseases I just Mentioned I named Blossom en rot and corking and bitter pit those are commonly thought of as being calcium deficiencies but think about this what if the Calcium deficiency is being caused by root absorption of nitrate increasing Rises spere pH and making it difficult for the plant to pick up calcium what if the Calcium deficiency isn't caused

by calcium being low in the soil but by nitrate being high in the Soil this is a common phenomena it's one that we see all the time so now let's talk about the next Point nitrogen creating an energy drain like why would nitrogen drain energy from plant this is another citation actually it might be from an earlier edition of uh Marner horse marer mineral nutrition of higher plants I think it might have been in the second edition where I read that um a citation that indicated When when a corn crop absorbs 80% of its total

nitrogen requirement in the form of nitrate that will consume 16% of that plant's total photosynthetic energy just to convert nitrate to proteins or I actually to say that correctly just to convert nitrate to amine nitrogen that's a tremendous energy drain 80% of nitrate absorption or 80% of total nitrogen as nitrate which is Very common that's most what happens in most production agriculture might even be greater than 80% in many cases it takes 16% of a plant's total photosynthetic energy why does it drain that much energy from the plant because the energy requirement the sugar energy

the photosynthate energy that is needed to convert nitrate to Amin nitrogen is really high um so this here's a couple of citations and References again this this these are direct quotes um from the book that I uh showed you just a moment ago so when we think of it in in ATP equivalents I was trying to find I missed finding the math uh um for sugar and and carbohydrate requirements but the energy requirement for the reduction of one molecule or one mole of nitrate is 15 moles ATP with an additional five moles for ammonium assimilation

and this this reference uh it was speaking Specifically to when nitrate assimilation happens in the root system ideally nitrate assimilation should happen in the leaves and when that happens it will require less energy less energy is requ required to convert nitrate in the leaves than it is required to convert nitrate in The Roots however many agricultural crops under mainstream agronomic practices convert a lot of nitrate in The Roots rather than the leaves why because they get too much And the leaves can't keep up so short version bottom line is uh when when there's this common

phenomena when Growers switch to um organic production or or when they fure apply nitrogen um it's commonly understood that when we put on a folar application of Ura versus a soil application of Ura we require a lot fewer pounds per acre to produce the same crop response or when a grower switches and becomes Organically certified they'll start using organic forms of nitrogen such as liquid fish or amino acids corn steep liquor different types of materials and all of sudden instead of using a pound and a half or a pound and a quar of nitrogen to

grow a bushel of grain they might be using 7 pounds of nitrogen or 0.5 pounds of nitrogen to grow a bush of grain and this has been observed commonly widely understood to occur for decades and this is the difference pound A unit of nitrogen is not the same from a plant response when plants absorb amino acid nitrogen it actually gives them energy they gain energy from amino acids they gain energy from bacterial protein but when they absorb nitrate it costs them energy this is why you can have why different forms of nitrogen have different levels

of efficiency and it takes more if if the plant is getting All its nitrogen from nitrate as it is in most of mainstream Agronomy it's going to take higher levels it's going to take that one and a qu one and a half Bush of nitrogen per bu of grain but if it's getting amino acid or peptide or protein nitrogen it takes a fraction of that because it's not depriving the planet of energy anyway um yeah I'm going to move on there's there's more that I could talk about here but this is the key Piece so

um I spoke earlier about the increased water requirement this is just from field experience and OB observation I can't point to a citation on this and um it varies based on crop species and local context the local context is important here but what we've observed is that when plants get the majority of their nitrogen from nitrate it increases the plant's water requirements we think somewhere between 20 and 30% some crops more or their crops less and this is as Compared to plants who are getting the most most of their nitrogen from the rise of AG

cycle um so as I pointed out this is because of two key drivers as well there's a couple of other drivers that we think are relevant as well but the big ones are that there's no water needed to convert nitrate or less water I should say and less water required because you have stronger cell membranes and you have less Transpiration and uh another factor that happens I described this in my webinar on the plant Health pyramid when you have plants absorbing most of their nitrogen from uh microbes from bacterial cells and they have this energy

gain that energy gain expresses itself as this strong waxy oily coating on the leaf surface and that helps the plants cool a lot more efficiently the short version is uh there's a number of different mechanisms we don't pretend to Fully understand it we think we have a handle on a couple of them but the bottom line is you can greatly increase a crop's drought resilience and reduce its water requirement by making sure that it gets nitrogen in forms other than nitrate um and of course this is one of the reasons why in drought stressed years

in dry years and dry areas um the farmers who are using cover Crops or who are supplying nitrogen in forms other than nitrate whether that's from manure compost whatever the source might be be those crops consistently perform better in drier conditions because they have less water requirements and they can continue to some degree in the case of the rise of AG cycle they can continue to access nutrients even in the absence of free soil moisture so this is a a photo of a page That was shared uh from one of the colleagues that I've worked

with um a farmer grower who's been on these webinars in the past and uh this was a research that was assembled this is a a review of the literature that was done by um an agronomist at cagri if I recall correctly and um he described that uh in his literature review he found that um a folar application of a pound of nitrogen was the equivalent of seven pounds of of Nitrogen applied to the soil and um it's pretty remarkable when you think about this we we see this effect commonly now there are many um critiques

of this type of approach to say well we've done the research and we haven't we haven't really been able to um see or to find these equivalencies observe these equivalencies uh in the field practice and I've also I have reviewed the reviewers I've I've reviewed the Critiques of of those people who weren't able to find success and it's blatantly obvious what they're getting wrong it's timing you wouldn't consider putting on 50 units of nitrogen foler applied when you have a crop when you have a corn crop that's at V3 or V4 or V5 when the

majority of the needs are later but that's exactly what researchers are doing to try to discredit this um so it's it's really a question of optimal timing when we're looking at foler Applications so I'm going to go through a few specific crop examples um my the minutes keep ticking by pretty quickly here but um want to give you a few quick crop examples of how nitrogen creates y drag and actually um well I'll get to this point on vegetation yet in a bit here so when we look at corn and the formation of black layer

we know that every day that we can delay the formation of black layer gives us an additional four Bushels per acre yield so if we can extend the grain fill period And Delay black layer and push that back that we can have a significant yield response really quickly and so the question is what causes black layer and what is black layer um the I had a conversation with Michael mcneel probably I don't know half a dozen years maybe a decade ago where he was describing That um what causes the black layer of course is that

we have placental cells collapsing and blocking sugar transport into the current and um black layer can also be caused by photosynthesis of the plant itself just slowing down or shutting down when you have defoliation uh some of the research that has been done around defoliation basically what happens anything that limits sugar movement into the Kernel is going to trigger the formation of black layer but one of the triggers that uh mcneel and colleagues identified a decade ago was when you have weak cell membranes because those cells don't have enough calcium and don't have enough silicon

you will get early collapse of those placental cells and that abundant calcium and silicon nutrition will delay that um the collapse of those cell membranes And Delay the black PL the black layer Formation so when you think about what I said earlier about nitrate it's quite common for plants who absorbing nitrate to not do a good job of absorbing Cal calcium which leads to weak cells and which leads to the early formation of black layer and corn this is one of several different mechanisms by which plants absorbing excessive levels of nitrate will lead to premature

sence premature development of black layer um here's one on mold and MotoX Inss this is a very simple trial that was run I don't know it's also 10 or 12 years ago uh when we were doing uh product testing and early research and development on our humacar product um so left here left three leaves and and uh corn ears were treated with humac carb the right was untreated uh pretty remarkable difference in the field and you can see the tip fill and there's quite a difference here in the ears as well but um these samples

were collected With the intention of sending them to a laboratory it was this was pre Harvest they're still fairly high moisture content I want to say they're somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 to 23% um and so the intention was to ship these ear samples off to a lab well they ended up sitting on a desk for a week and this is what they look like so the only difference was 3% humac carb applied in 3 Gall per acre 1034 in the fero app plan Nitrogen was sressed later but one of the effects that we

know of from humic carb applications is that it's very effective at stimulating biology to rapidly convert nitrogen applied nitrogen into bacterial proteins so um I don't have the data for this slide deck but one of the uh data points or sever of the data points that we have on this trial indicate that the crop leaves had much lower levels of nitrate And of course we didn't we weren't able to check the grain for nitrate versus different forms of protein proteins or different nitrogen forms but the bottom line is that that reduction in nitrate had a

significant reduction produced a significant reduction in molds on the year after when it was stored inside a plastic bag and we've observed this just over and over again where uh we see reductions in molds and mot toxins and apot toxins 2012 we had a Major reduction an aot toxins on The Growers that we were working with over uh what they experienced in untreated Fields when we look at lodging um short version is that plants that are absorbing nitrate do a poor job of absorbing copper and calcium uh copper in particular gives so we have the

effect of weak watery cells and weaken cell membranes and reduced copper levels which reduces lignification we very common When we have Growers that where crops experience wind stress we have a lot less lodging when we start managing nitrogen differently and Nutrition management differently um storability this is for potatoes and onions and apples any fruit or vegetable that spends an extended period of time in storage you know profitability is not just about yield so much as it is about marketable yield and what defines marketable yield is the Fruit or the vegetable that actually uh gets sent

to the retail store shelf or to the enduser whatever that might be and we can easily mainstream Agronomy can fairly easily produce lots of yield per acre that doesn't store really well and particularly in regards to the way that nitrogen is managed so um what happened might be missing I'm missing a slide unfortunately um but what happens is when you have well going back to my earlier comments around Calcium absorption we know that if you have um purple blotch or ring spot or um any of this long list of of disorders that can occur inside

an onion or inside a potato um those are very frequently linked back to calcium nutrition but we need to stop thinking about calcium nutrition in isolation from potassium and nitrogen management when you have too much potassium and too much nitrate it will Greatly inhibit plants ability to absorb calcium so um and many of these challenges fundamentally come down to calcium and Trace mineral nutrition so um would be interesting to talk a bit about wheat because um we know that it's fairly common for wheat to be uh compensated or to get premiums based on protein content

there's quite a bit of interesting research out there on protein how protein content responds to Applications of nitrogen at different Stages of plant life um folar applications at later stages versus earlier stages but here's the interesting story around protein well first of all um we can say there's lots of variation and gener it's generally true that there isn't much correlation between nitrogen applications to the soil I'm not talking about folur here but nitrogen applications to the soil and grain protein Content and there's a number of reasons for why that is but the short version is

that nitrogen applied to the soil often converts to nitrate moves into the plants and isn't properly converted to storable proteins so when you have um because the and it's not converted to storable proteins because the plant doesn't have enough magnesium sulfur and miminum it's those three elements in particular there is a much closer Correlation in fact there's a very close correlation between sufficiency of those three nutrients and protein content than there is between nitrogen in the leaf and protein content and here's why when the plant absorbs nitrate during the vegetative growth stage it will store

that nitrate in the vaces inside the cells and so you can pull a tissue analysis or plant sap analysis that shows you have high levels of nitrate And therefore you don't need to apply more nitrogen to have a high protein crop but the plant as I understand it will attempt to only transfer proteins into the grain not nitrogen or not nitrate and for that reason if you have abundant nitrate but not enough magnesium Sul from aluminum a lot of that nitrogen is going to remain inside the leaf and not move into the grain Effectively another

consideration um I shouldn't say that it's not going to move into the grain at all because it will to some degree which brings us to another deception um this is another conversation but uh when you send grain to a laboratory to be analyzed they don't measure protein many of you are aware of this I'm sure but they measure nitrogen and they multiply it by mathematical Factor usually by 6.25 to Extrapolate protein so it's a projected protein number it's not an actual real measured protein number it's a measured nitrogen number you can inflate that artificially by

just simply putting on a large application of folar nitrogen uh like Ura late in the growing season and have it immediately moved into the kernel and into the grain before the plant can fully metabolize it so um anyway there's a whole bunch that we could Unwrap and unravel there around uh protein content in wheat because it's measured there but it holds true for all grain generally across the board so um the clock keeps ticking here wow way too fast I see we've got lots of questions um I'm going to speed through a couple of these

last really important points um I came up with this diagram to describe how I observed plant growth energy so thinking about the energy Inside the plant you have two forms of energy on the left side you have vegetative energy and you have reproductive energy and you want those two to constantly be balanced and balance might mean something different than what we're used to seeing in the case of the Watermelon Crop that I described at the beginning of this webinar uh um so when those two are balanced you will get really strong Reproduction and you don't

have excess of vegetative growth and then you have all these other factors that can contribute yield drag yield drag could be drought stress it could be uh temperature uh to too hot temperatures or too cold temperatures there's there's all kinds of things uh ex external influences that can contribute to yield drag but there's also many agronomic influences that can contribute yield drag like plant growth Regulators or Like excessive nitrate or excessive chloride or excessive potassium um I've described some of the mechanisms there's there's more but I've described some of the mechanisms by which nitrate can

create a yield drag so when we look at these nutrients calcium potassium chloride and nitrate as well as oxin uh Drive vegetative growth energy and three out of the five can exhibit a yield drag effect when they're present in Excess and I should maybe clarify that language when I say they are present in excess uh what I mean is that they are present in amounts larger than are required for optimal plant health and yields and it this might surprise you but if you base it on that definition that includes greater than 90% of agriculture produced

crops because we commonly apply too much nitrogen too early And by the time the plant gets to the grain fill or fruit fill period or the period of crop the crop stage where we have Peak nitrogen demand the majority of the nitrogen will usually have converted to nitrate in the soil profile and I've described all the or some of the mechanisms by which nitrogen creates yield drag so let's uh just elaborate or follow up on a few of these thoughts nitrate creates yel drag by one creating Excessive vegetative growth which corresponds to fewer buds flowers

fruit grain two it increases the plant's water requirements which limits yields particularly when the crop is challenged with moisture you know it used to be throughout the Grain Belt in the midwest um their soils and their their crop their corn production practices they were quite comfortable going for a 3-we period Without Rain um and I I have this from Michael mcneel and Don Huber and Many older more much more experienced and longer life experienced agronomist than ey there the the standard uh rule of thumb was that they would be comfortable for 3 weeks without rain

today the moment we go a week without an inch of rain or longer than a week without an inch of rain uh um crops start experiencing moisture stress what is different what's changed over the last 30 some years or longer One of the changes that has happened is we put on a lot more nitrogen than we used to and we've lost a lot more solid carbon than we than we used to have so there's a number of contributing factors but there's no question in my mind that the increased water requirement as a result of a

lot of nitrogen application being converted to n nitrate is one of the major contributing factors for the increased water requirement Um energ photosynthetic energy sugar energy needed for nitrate conversion and that means that that energy when you think about nitrates absorbing converting nitrates absorbing 16% of a plant's total um photosynthetic energy and the fact that 100% of that 16% could be gained back by the plant absorbing microbial proteins that means theoretically you've got a 16% energy jump that can go Directly into yield will that translate to a 16% yield increase based on our field experience

that's not unrealistic at all so there's the summary um vegetative growth water requirements uh actually I'm going to add two more pieces here that I missed uh reducing absorption of calcium and trace minerals and premature plant death premature plant death this is the difference between diey down and dry Down a really healthy corn plant I know I've been using corn as an example but other crops as well a really healthy corn plant will have a high moisture stock with a minimum of four green leaves below the ear and green all the way to the top

and an ear with the grain at 17 to 18% moisture content that used to be normal that's a definition of proper maturity and proper dry down today what we consider normal is plants who die Down they die prematurely so you end up with a low moisture stock a plant that has moved all of its energy sucked all the energy out of the leaves from both the top down and from the bottom up and moved them together into the ear and the plant is dying early and you have a dry plant dry uh stock and and

leaves with a high moisture content ear 25 to 30% moisture content or 20 plus% moisture content that's the difference between die down and dry Down but in addition to the yield drag for a specific crop we also have ecosystem level long-term yield drag and what happens with these um elevated nitrogen applications is we prevent the soil from building soil carbon levels and we prevent soil from building microbial nitrogen reserves we have an abundance of examples today and more than enough Farms who have experienced this who've Been uh through this transition pathway where they now have

soils that have high levels of nitrogen contained inside the bacterial population hydrogen that doesn't leech hydrogen that's available in a drought they don't need to continue applying nitrogen in fact many of these Farms are down to less than 20% of their historical nitrogen applications and you can't build nitrogen levels in Soil and hold it stable as long as we continue to have these high nitrate application levels or high nitrogen application levels it's uh self fulfilling destruction or creating a drug addict whatever you want to call it so when we think about nitrogen timing um it's

very important when we are taking um as we go down as we start going through the transition one of the easy fundamental first steps is you Apply nitrogen when the crop needs it not months in advance or weeks in advance because when we apply nitrogen close to the root system long before the crop needs it it shuts down this RIS ofy process it shuts down the bacterial populations and uh you in essence create a drug addict you make sure that the nitrogen cycling process can't function in soils because you've created you've added too much nitrogen

from the very beginning and by the way this can happen Not just with with quote unquote chemical nitrogen like uan or Ura but it can also come from over applications of manure uh liquid manure in particular but also from dry manure applications in large amounts uh don't really see it happening from cover crops and cover crop incorporation because of the bacterial population that's already associated with those but it can definitely come from manora applications so our approach to nitrogen Management is pretty simple give plants what they need only when they need it and we use

soil analysis and sap analysis to determine that we do not guess and that's why um since we don't have to guess we are able to produce um con consistent yields um higher yields than what are expected in the region um and not fall on our face very frequently um for folar applications we prefer amino acids or low bioret Ura and For side dress if we're in a situation where we do need to side rest our preference is Ura um and include with the Ura the nitrogen efficiency program which many of you have heard me talk

about the nitrogen efficiency program is essentially these three pieces um with sulfur so we're using humac carb at 3% of the total solution uh rejuvenate at 3% of the total nitrogen solution uh plus rebound malinam at a Pint per acre and sulfur usually using ammonium thiosulfate so that we achieve a 10 to1 nitrogen to sulfur ratio for whatever um source of nitrogen that we're applying and uh we conducted our own in-house research I think this was this last year this most recent year we found that um a straight Ura application lost 16% more nitrogen or

not 16% 16 times more nitrogen to leeching than when we combined the Nitrogen efficiency program with the Ura um that's pretty impressive um one of the goals that we've indicated that we've stated is that we want to have the nitrogen efficiency program the the purpose and the intent of that is to stimulate bacterial population so that 100% of the applied nitrogen is immediately converted into an absorbed by bacteria accumulated inside bacterial cells and convert it to bacterial Proteins because then we save it it doesn't leech it's available in drought and the plants can still continue

to absorb it so uh if you have any further questions uh now is the time to type them into the chat box uh oh my goodness I see that we have 50 questions and we're already up on the hour um I apologize for taking as much time as I have I knew there was a lot I wanted to get through it quickly um but I am going to take the Time to answer all the questions so uh I'll try to be concise make it to the point and move quickly but um if you have questions

if you're willing to to hang around I'm sure the conversation is going to continue to be continue to be interesting um and if you want to learn more if you want to talk specifics I've spoken in very Broad generality if you want to talk specifics about your operation our team would love to talk to you reach out to us call us I'm Available on the phone as well as a backup um if our if you have questions our team doesn't know the answers to which doesn't happen very often but um happy to connect with you

I really enjoy the interaction enjoy these conversations um first question is from John warmerdam hi John you've shared that nitrate is a vegetative nutrient and fruit fill is a vegetative process is there a place to apply nitrates after the cell division phase on tree crops It's an interesting question John you could do that if you're concerned about fruit being too small um and not filling properly but in most cases you're likely to get a better response from a an amino acid or a peptide application or protein application of some type than you would from a

nitrate application would be my guess um question from Justice why are aea nitrogen plant sap analysis Target values higher than NCC Target values um Justin I don't know what crops you're referring to so I can't say specifically but uh in general I can say that we've optimized our values based on where we get the greatest level of disease and insect resistance combined with the highest yield so what you're likely to find is that not only do you we have um total nitrogen requirements that are higher for some crops but those also correspond with higher levels

of calcium for example or higher levels of silicon To balance that out a follow-up question from Justice can you comment uh if total nitrogen in plant sap is twice as high as recommended do all other nutrients have to be doubled to reach optimal levels um no it's much safer and much wiser to try to bring the nitrogen levels down um and and the reason I say no is because if you just try to double all The cations and the anions um what's going to end up happening is you end up with imbalanced phes in the

plant sap which is going to lead to disease susceptibility so you're likely you're better off to try to balance mineral profiles at uh a lesser rate than double of whatever the optimals might need might be uh question from Terry do you still use nitrate soil test to monit monitor nitrogen that is available for crop Growth uh it's a great question Terry we use um the heey analysis usually through W Labs or through regen egg Labs um that measures uh not just nitrate but measures uh different components and different fractions of nitrogen um that are in

the soil profile I know there's other Growers that are also experimenting with the Illinois nitrogen test that's been popularized by Richard mulany and uh which is some has many similarities I would say to the hany Analysis it's different in some ways but you can listen to my podcast interview with Rick mven uh regarding that next question from Molita if we use molasses as a food source for microorganisms in order to create Amino sugars what are the optimal doses without the plant becoming dependent um the answer to that is going to depend on how much nitrogen

you've added to your system um so it could be as few as So first of all I would say that the goal is not to add you shouldn't strive to add enough sugar to balance out the carbon to nitrogen ratio that's going to be prohibitively expensive and shouldn't be necessary in most soils instead the goal is just to add enough sugar to jump start or to really accelerate the bacterial populations which would usually be an application the neighborhood of a few pounds per acre this is why we include Rejuvenate uh or one of the reasons

why we include rejuvenate in our nitrogen deficiency program and it would add sugars at only a rate of a pound or two per acre but of course it has lots of other stuff in there as well um question from Terry tissue or sap tests what levels of nitrogen do you like to see in a corn plant at V4 and R2 uh we no longer use tissue analysis we exclusively use sap analysis and um we Just completed uh actually not just just recently but it's been a bit ago that we completed our most recent um database

analysis and looking at where the highest crops were performing so I can't answer that question for you right off the top of my head Terry but I'd be happy for you to connect with the aea team and give you specific answers on what we're looking for in sap analysis at those specific crop stages uh question from Darren the form Of nitrogen taken up affects soil PH does soil pH affect the the soil nitrogen cycle and the form of nitrogen in the soil my thoughts go to bacterial glues that I recall being alkaline so is the

fungal to bacterial ratio important for soil nitrogen form uh Darren there's a couple of questions wrapped up in in your uh question there and to some degree you're you're asking the right question it's a Bit of a chicken and egg question does soil biology determine pH or does uh that affects nutrient avilability or does the soil chemistry affect the pH that determines the biological population that determines nutrient availability maybe it's uh more like the house that Jack built instead of a chicken and egg but anyway the short version is that yes fungal to bacterial ratios

do alter um soil PH and obviously soil mineral balance uh Calcium to magnesium ratios and other elements really affect soil PH but if you're dealing dealing with calcaria soils if you're dealing with uh or um if you're dealing with oxidized soils which is most agricultural soils you will want to have the plants be absorbing nitrogen in the form of preferably UA well most preferably bacterial nitrogen secondly Ura third ammonium avoid plants absorbing nitrate at all Costs this is going to have the effect of acidify the rizosphere and increasing nutrient availability so the pathway to avoiding

the absorption of nitrate at all costs is don't apply it too early because if you apply nitrogen to soil that is oxidized or to soil that is alkaline that whatever form of nitrogen if it's Ura if it's ammonium sulfate if it's u32 or 28 it's going to convert to nitrate nitrogen in a matter of days or weeks depending on moisture and Temperature and context um question from an does Ura application change pH of the RIS ofhere so I just answered that the key point is it's not the form that you apply it's how long you

apply it before it was the absorbed by the plant and in what form it got transitioned to um it was included in my third slide I was compressing stuff and I didn't really get into this in detail but the short version is that when you apply AA or when you apply ammonium it will go through the nitrification process and convert to nitrate in most agricultural soils because a either they alkaline or B they're oxidized meaning they're tilled they have application of limestone tillage too much too much oxygen whatever might be the case they will quickly

convert to nitrate that can happen in a week it can happen in four to five weeks happens pretty quickly question from Tom uh when you fertilize With ammonium I just answered this question thank you Tom glad to see you here um question from Mr Anonymous Ura or calcium nitrate which one has a more negative effect on SOL biology the better question or the right answer is it depends on how much you apply and whether it's been buffered uh both of those materials have a very high salt index and you can offer out the neg the

potential negativity by applying them With humic substances and with carbohydrates question from Jessica um in your opinion what's the most accurate way to test nitrogen use efficiency of your plants uh Jessica it depends a bit on what crop you're talking about um well actually I guess you could use this for most crops I would propose you look at uh nitrogen application per unit of yield so how much nitrogen is required in whatever form you're applying it in to grow 100 bushel of a certain crop or So many tons of potatoes and that way you will

act be able to accurately track nitrogen efficiency over time question from Bryant don't organic sources of nitrogen for example amino acids get converted to nitrate very quickly in the soil um I alluded to this earlier Bryant when I spoke about uh manure being converted to nitrate uh the short answer is yes they can um it depends again on the amount of carbon that is contained with them so um let's Say ruminant manure like Dairy manure or beef manure uh this tends to happen more slowly because there's more carbon containing that manure whereas with hog manure

or poultry manure uh there's less carbon contained and they tend to convert to nitrate much more rapidly uh question from TB curious about the nitrogen cycle of manure would Banning manure right on a cornrow be a negative or a positive EPA founds on broadcasting manure on top and to not incorporate Would the cover crops help incorporate liquid manura in a noil operation uh yes TB you're asking the right question the best place to put um a manure application is to put it on a living cover crop and have that cover crop quickly pick up that

nitrogen and incorporate it inside the plant so that when it then goes back into the soil system it's in the form of organic nitrogen rather than in the form of nitrates or Ammonium um question from Scott Gil how does 20 to 32 hi Scott how does 208 to 32% U play into this for the soil and plant you have three different sources of N and it's probably the number one fertilizer in the US does the nitrate overrun the other two um the sh answer is yes it does because for two reasons uh the way it's

commonly applied is too early before the plant actually needs it and since it's Applied too early the plant gets a shot of nitrate then which is most available and most rapidly absorbed and then the Ura and the ammonium that's left converts to nitrate over a period of time and then the plant gets an even further shot of nitrate so uh I'm not a fan of 28 or 32 lots of The Growers that we work with use it but I prefer liquid Ura and uh even for a side dress and I prefer to apply it uh

right when the crop needs it or a week or so In advance um that's this is where you're going to get the greatest crop yield response um question from Darren you know I've been answering questions as fast as I can and I'm still at 50 and I was at 50 when I started what's your opinion on corn steep nitrogen and what impact does it have on crops and risos spere biology uh corn steep nitrogen is generally in the amino acid form as I understand it and it tends to Have a positive impact on both plants

and biology and requires fewer pounds of n uh has greater n efficiency um question on Optimum dose of sugar with Ura I think I already answered that question um how do we measure bacterial nitrogen fraction in the soil with the he analysis that I referenced earlier question from Jason if I'm applying 160 units of nitrogen as ammonium sulfate per acre in a blueberry Production granular and drip combination what would you suspect I could back that off to if I apply Ura foler ah Jason very very good question very important distinction so you're growing blueberries there

are two crops that are adapted to uh two commercial crops that are adapted to do really well at absorbing ammonium they are blueberries and rice so you're using the right form of of nitrogen I would not suggest switching from ammonium sulfate To Ura continue using ammonium sulfate because of the crop that you're growing um and I include this topic in my more in-depth um seminars but blueberries and R are both adapted to thrive in very reduced environments that's why they can thrive in saturated soils and um why they have such a shallow root system in

the case of blueberries so um but in my experience the60 units of nitrogen that you're applying is really High I think you could safely do a lot less than that um if you were managing that and buffering that out with sugar and other things so um we have some very high yielding blueberry Growers that we work with that are less than half of the amount of nitrogen that you're applying actually they're under 60 units question from Victor do I consider amino acids or peptides from fermented yeast or liquid fish as a bacterial protein the short

answer is yes you Could the the better rather than saying bacterial proteins I could be saying microbial proteins but I'm just generically referring saying bacterial proteins because that represents the majority of what's in the profile uh question from Nick does ammonium nitrogen take more or less energy from the plant to convert in comparison to nitrogen and how about youra nitrogen and what percentage amounts so Nick I answer I actually Answered this question in some detail in um I have a webinar on YouTube on nitrogen use efficiency where I go into this um I was under

the impression that ammonium takes less energy than nitrate quite a bit less and I still think that's the case but I did find at least one citation actually included in in the slide deck here that indicates that perhaps ammonium takes more than nitrate but um not as I understand it right now so I need to double check on that um but The short answer is generally ammonium takes as I understand it ammonium takes a lot less energy to convert than nitrate does um can back question from Sarah can bacterially dominated soils with a pH above

seven convert ammonium applications to nitrate for the plant to take up yes they can in fact it happens the fastest in alkaline soils and in Oxidized soils so even with no nitrate forms of nitrogen being applied I have observed nitrate within the plant yes that would be the case we find Sarah this an entire Point I've been trying to make for this webinar is that most of the nitrogen absorbed by most commercially grown crops is in the form of nitrate regardless of what form is applied because of the condition that Our soils are in and

because of the condition that our soil bacterial populations are in um question from gourd can you walk us through a program that can achieve 200 bushel corn crop with a small amount of nitrate absorption uh forms our fertilizer number fol your passes Etc um gourd I've had uh we've had a couple of webinars recently I guess uh with the webinar that we had recently with boat Claw and we didn't really get into a whole lot of detail but um our our team at AA would be happy to walk you through the particulars but in short

we typically apply no nitrogen at planting and I'm talking about a corn crop here so it's it's it's partially context dependent it's soil dependent we we we look at the handy analysis we see what's going on and we don't guess but here's what they frequently end up looking something like this no no Nitrogen at planting because we want to get the rise AG process started um 10 to 20 to 40 units of nitrogen as a side dress at about V5 dependent again on context and uh one or two folar applications of nitrogen um or irrigation

applications of nitrogen if that's relevant uh during right around VT or R1 somewhere in there depending on again context uh question from Mike I'm farming 15 to 20 year old almonds uh conventionally in the sanen valley trees are very vegetative and have primarily been farmed only injecting u32 sulfate of potach and solubor these trees have been farmed according to UC Standards of applying 68 pounds of nitrogen per th000 pounds of nuts harvested we are sap sampling this year and are aiming to be better stewards of nitrogen also planning to water and Run f your amino

acid Keel of micros to help Metabolize nitrogen do you recommend using soy protein hydrolysate amino acid nitrogen also how do you compare amino acid nitrogen pound for pound with synthetic nitrogen uh a couple of questions there Mike um yes generally I'm in favor of using um so protein hydrolysate seems to perform very well in lots of different situations and um we've found this is crude of thumb based on experience we found that a Pound of amino acid nitrogen seems to produce the same crop response as 4 pounds of nitrate and um you can verify in

fact you should verify performance of everything that's going on with sap analysis which it sounds like you're already doing so I wish you success in that I'm sure you're going to have lots of fun figuring that out and I mean that I'm not joking I I think it's going to be very enjoyable because I think you're Going to be very pleasantly surprised what happens with excess Ura that's applied to the soil answer is it gets converted to nitrate and then it leeches question from Justice how much nitrogen requirement is possible to cover with full your

nutrition well depends on the crop and well what I can say this way it is possible to cover 100% but is it economical is it desirable I would say Probably not the goal should be to get the majority coming from soil biology and just uh correct deficiencies very on a very limited basis with folur uh question from Damon during one of Dr White's presentations he mentioned the presence of nitrogen fixing bacteria on the leaves of plants can you briefly Explain how and why the bacteria would be in the leaves uh I can't explain that briefly

I've got some pretty interesting Books here behind me on uh bacterial populations in the phosphere on the phop plane as it's referred to the short answer is that um as I understand it bacteria on the leaf surface have a symbiotic relationship with plants exactly the same as bacteria or maybe not exactly the same but very similar as bacteria in the rizosphere they have a symbiotic relationship with the plants the plants provide them with carbon with sugars with energy and in turn they Protect the plant from potentially infectious diseases they um solize dust and minerals that

land on the leaf surface and provide the plant with nutrition um so there's a symbiotic relationship that happens on the leaf surface much the same as what happens in the rizosphere question from Bruce would a fure spray of ammonium sulfate a late vegetative stage of growth on corn be a good way to supply the nitrogen needs um it's okay But Ura low B Ura is going to be better question from malleta if if we use fish hydrolysate as a source of amino acids can we overdo it like nitrate um I haven't observed that yet actually

stop to think of it I don't think I've ever observed like what is excessive levels of amino acids like I've never observed really elevated levels of nitrogen on a sap analysis coming from amino acids what happens is you will get super sized plants very Quickly with amino acids much more quickly than you will with nitrates um what are the optimal doses crop dependent context dependent use sap analysis to verify question from Clint uh Clinton do small grain crops have an equivalent to the black layerage um I'm sure they have a similar progression of maturity Clinton

I don't know the answer exactly Um but I'm sure they have a trigger point that determines when there is no longer any um transfer of sugars that will occur into the kernels question from Mr Anonymous or Mrs Anonymous I have no way of guessing which in a hay field doesn't ammonium form of nitrogen hasten the grass going to seed perhaps a 50/50 application of both forms of nitrogen is a good compromise so the answer is you're correct ammonium Will speed up reproduction which you want on a reproductive crop but you may not want on a

vegetative crop um such as alpha alpha hay or kale or spinach so the best solution is to not apply a blend of 50/50 because what's going to happen is even the 50% of ammonium that you add is quickly going to convert to nitrate the best solution is to use Ura or to even better than Ura is to use an organic um protein or amino acid form question from Mike um I want to ask About amino acids and their biostimulant effects when paired with calcium do you have experience using amino acids like glutamic acid and glycine

to help increase uptake of calcium yes I have some limited experience and yes they can be very effective when they're the right form of amino acids even uh just standard Glycine and glutamic acid you'll get Vari uh variable performance depending on the source and depending on the L versus R uh Rotation um can I theoretically use a soy protein hydrolysate that has high levels of glycine so um you could try it you could experiment but um yeah just the point that I made previously is that not all forms of amino acid or not all forms

of glycine are going to perform identically um question from Sally I have high nitrates 10 part per million of my irrigation water what can I do well First of all 10 part per million isn't High secondly enjoy you've got free nitrogen fertilizer just buffer it out accordingly with I want to say buffered out accordingly make sure your soil microbiome has enough sugars and magnesium and sulfur and malum and uh enjoy watching that convert to bacterial proteins question from NED is there an upper limit of folar nitrogen that should be applied Um the upper limit is

only determined by the presence or absence of other elements so as long as the crop has high enough levels of magnesium and sulfur and miminum and other nutrition to uh support healthy vegetative growth as you build more biomass quickly you can you can add a lot of nitrogen through foler applications and through repeat applications question from clay so if excessive nitrates create a yield drag What can a farmer do to reduce those effects yeah I didn't uh include enough information in the slide deck and I I answered this question partially earlier when I gave an

example program but um the conclusion is is actually pretty simple it's the the bottom line summary don't apply nitrogen in any form until the crop needs it or a week or two before it needs it and then apply it in the form of Ura that's how you remove yield drag and that's how you get the Greatest yield responses question from Ken when you refer to yield drag and net energy per yield I'm assume you're always referring to fruit seed yield in a forage context when the goal is to Max total digestible nutrients per acre but

also to provide amino acid nitrogen to AR roomin myome rather than npn nonprotein nitrogen how do we balance nitrogen forms to achieve this balance um Ken my recommendation again would be to use Ura and to combine That with the other elements that I spoke of the sulfur magnesium miminum component that's going to give you vegetative growth um and the net energy for yield component would still hold true in a vegetative crop question from Brian is management of excessive soil nitrate with a hania test different than management of excess sap plant leaf nitrate I mean this

in terms of long Game long-term soil Health like high carbon and nitrogen nutrients cycling covers humic acids bacteria fungi uh versus short game plant health and fol years with balancing nutrients via sap analysis uh um is management of excess soil nitrate different than management of excessive sap nitrate if I'm understanding you correctly I think the answer is no um well there are different tools being Used so with excess of sap nitrate uh we can put on foler applications to to quick convert that nitrate to complete proteins whereas with excessive soil nitrate uh we are using

different tools you're using carbon you're using cover crops um but you're also still using sulfur magnesium and miminum so similar similar nutrients I guess would be used in both soil and plants I hope that's the right answer And I hope I understood your question correctly question from Holly um in our area it's common to use Ura and ammonium nitrogen sources could you quickly discuss some of the factors that influence the rate of nitrification to illustrate why those sources might not be inherently safe um I seem to have a problem discussing anything quickly uh much less

the nitrification process but um the short answer is the Speed of nitrification is as I understand it majorly determined by three things uh the soil's oxidation state soil temperature and soil moisture so uh temperature and moisture are fairly straightforward and I would they appear obvious to me um basically you can think of your soil as a bacterial petri dish and the more ideal temperatures you have and moisture levels you have for bacterial Populations to thrive the faster the nitrification process is going to be the third factor is going to be the soil's oxidation state so

when you have oxidized soils and I talk about this in a number of other webinars as well that you can uh link to when you have oxidized soils those can be spare soils that are exposed to sunlight um soils that have had um lots of tillage and the introduction of a lot of oxygen soils that have had Limestone Applied or soils that have had lots of salt fertilizers applied basically anything that has an oxidizing effect or a weathering effect that will also dramatic speed up the nitrification process so um sadly many of the things that

we do in mainstream agriculture tend to have an oxidizing effect and they will speed up nitrification question from hunt do you think including calcium in a post tassel Folar application in corn would Aid in preventing premature placental cell death thus increasing the grain fill period um maybe if it were cated calcium I don't know um my preference would be to make sure that that all that calcium gets into or large amounts of calcium get into those developing um grain embryos during the cell division period immediately after pollination so my Emphasis would be on getting large

amounts of calcium to be absorbed from the root system upwards uh during the tasseling and pollination Peri period And I think that's likely where you're going to produce your greatest response question from Ken how much nitrogen needs to be applied early for corn um I already gave an example we very seldom apply nitrogen before V5 and usually when I say usually uh let me Quantify that I'd say greater than 80% of the time our sap analysis results coming back at V5 show that the crop has excess of nitrogen at that stage there's not very many

ounces per acre of of nitrogen required by a corn plant 6 in tall there's just not and there's plenty in most soils to supply that the nitrogen Peak nitrogen demand usually happens later during the grain field period question from William uh is 200 Lb broadcast P of AMS at corn planting generally a good idea not in my opinion I would prefer to save it until later uh question from uh Miss Anonymous can nitrogen efficiency program be applied to granular Ura uh yes with some adaptations and some modifications it can um might need to switch to

using some dry ingredients instead of liquid ingredients because you can only apply liquid up to a couple liters per ton before you start um clumping depends on Your application type as well but the short answer is yes it can be adapted can excess nitrogen result from the application of finished and well-matured compost from Tom Willie I have not seen that yet I don't think um if you have a broad carbon to nitrogen ratio in mature compost like a 20 to1 or 31 um I haven't seen excess of nitrogen resolve from those types of applications have

you ever tried a liquid AMS 8009 Instead of ATS for liquid sulfur Source my understanding is that the sulfur would be more readily available in this form um from Danny hi Danny I have not don't think I have experience with that I recall I think a few of our Growers are doing that but um I haven't personally observed it um so I I don't know I know that we're generally quite satisfied with the response we're getting from ATS uh but it would be interesting to dig deeper into that and Try to understand better what's going

on question from hunt how do you ah hunt you asked the million dooll question how do you feel about nitrification Inhibitors to slow the conversion of ammonium to nitrate do these negatively impact overall soil biology you asked the right question my understanding is that yes they do um they do negatively impact overall soil biology because they impact a lot more than just the the nitrification bacteria So uh and the same the same goes for the Urias Inhibitors as well so putting on Urias Inhibitors uh also really does a number on soil biology and I don't

have haven't done my homework in fact I don't know that anyone has really looked at looked yet at how nitrification Inhibitors and Urias inhibitors will affect the rise of f cycle but I can't imagine that they don't affect it affect it negatively I would be really surprised if that were the Case question from Stan how long shall we wait to apply organic nitrogen and Ammon ammoniacal nitrogen on blueberry crops after we apply ericoid microle fungi together with humic acids and organic matter um that's a good question I don't think you'd need to wait for an

extended period at most 10 to 14 days um if you have if you're successful at getting your eroid microa in close proximity to the root system um I would Expect colonization to happen pretty quickly and at that point um neither of those nitrogen sources should have a negative effect on colonization anymore as I understand it when using Dr Ara could you impregnate humix or blend dry humix with the Ura the answer is yes something that we recommend pretty frequently using humic carb at 2 lit per ton is a common recommendation for us actually shouldn't say

it's a common Recommendation because we prefer using liquids but we have done have experimented with that a question from Danny uh there seems to be a fair bit of research showing optimal yield increases coming from a 1:1 ratio of Applied nitrate and ammonium why do you think that is um so Danny uh you you here's the deal all of nitrogen fertilization and all of agronomic advice or the vast Majority of it is all framed around mineral nitrogen nitrate versus ammonium and sometimes versus Ura the historical literature and the historical research does not include the rise

of Fiji cycle it's completely absent from the conversation and what I'm advocating is to shift our nitrogen management to use the rise of AG cycle first and foremost and then supplement with ammonium or Nitrate as needed so um and what all of our field experience shows and that's a lot of field experience millions of Acres at this point optimal yield increases are going to come from ryop cycle nitrogen not from a 1:1 ratio of nitrate and ammonium now if you're growing in a hydroponic sit situation or if you're relying only on Mineral nitrogen then The

one:1 ratio might be appropriate or relevant but if you're using bacterial proteins bacterial or microbial nitrogen that whole math goes out the window um so thanks for asking that question and for giving me the space to try to clarify that question from Andrew uh I was using nitrogen deficiency program last year after switching away from ammonium and hydros ammonia I was using U side dress on corn In southwest Iowa my problem is I can't side dress all my Fields because of the slopes and curves and odds and ends I had a company spread dry area

over the top on some Acres I feel both methods didn't work well the weather was too dry and the dry Ura didn't get worked into the ground I had them treat with humic acid and add some sulfur to it the plan for 23 was to sess uan before planting so I don't damage plants and I was going to double the rates of humic and sufur And add more car hydrates to try to stabilize it longer everyone has excellent luck with anhydr ammonia due to the ability to get it done before planting it stabilizes by killing

all the microbes around it Etc and so far has been a train has been a painful transition I hear you Andrew um that sounds like your transition has been a lot more painful than uh many that uh many of the Growers that we work with so I think this would Merit a conversation uh follow-up conversation offline where we can dig into the details a bit more deeply but um yeah obviously you have weather challenges um and logistical challenges both that need to be overcome so uh I like your plan for 23 um I think that

is a considered Next Step um a reasonable next step and it'd be interesting to see What uh what further next steps can be taken to help through the transition so that you don't have any further pain through that transition thanks for your comments um question from Matt do you believe that sap nutrient results ranges are correct for winter wheat I don't have any particular reason to not believe that's the case Matt if you have reasons to believe that they are not then uh I'd welcome hearing from you question from Craig on corn when do You

run a sap test if you want to fool your correct an issue um there's several correct answers but the one correct answer is two weeks before you intend to do the folar application question from Darren um currently set up to apply only granular products at seating what would be recommend a product placement at seating this is small grains in western Canada um Darren I'd want to dig deeper Into understanding soils and everything else that's going on but I would probably pick um either ammonium sulfate or Ura or some combination of both and I'd like to

add some humic substances and um other materials to that as well question from stevenh um Is it feasible to grow your own your own microorganisms using your own Farmland leaf mold habitat and inoculate those with molasses and a biochar medium and incorporate that into the RIS ofhere uh Yes step it's feasible to do that but that's not a replacement for adding nitrogen fixing bacteria and specific inoculant um and this is a very my point of view comes from a very practical perspective just a practical place from lots of experience we've had with people who have

developed their own microorganisms and you can certainly do that but um It's a false assumption to assume that everything your soils would benefit from is in the native habitat around you um that's going to vary bit dependent on plant species just a simple example would be risian bacteria if you're growing um legumes soybeans or alal or Clover something like that they're likely to benefit from uh rium inoculation or from soils that have had a history of rium and legumes in a rotation and so If you propagate species from a native habitat um unless you include

growing legumes as a part of your propagation you're unlikely to propagate Ryobi you're also unlikely to propagate micro razal fungi so um there is while those types of tools can be useful they're not enough in and of themselves in in my experience uh follow-up question from CG when is the best timing to run sap tests um Craig I would suggest reaching out to The AA team and uh having that conversation with them because they've put together a protocol of uh what the best crop stages are um to then follow up either usually our approach is

to do pre- sidess uh and again this is dependent on application capabilities and management capabilities uh question from Neils uh how do we determine carbon mixture rates for liquid manure is it by percentage of ammonium in the Manure uh Neils it's a it's a bit more complicated than that you also have to look at um the the bonding capacity or the culation capacity of different types of carbon is going to vary significantly and it's also going to vary based on particle sizing so our humic carb for example uh will effectively bind all the ammonium in

in uh very concentrated Li manure at rates of 1 gallon per 5,000 some cases as little as 1 gallon per 10,000 but you're talking about a Material that has uh a couple Micron siiz particles and um still has is very robust so most materials it's going to take quite a bit more than that don't don't have a good answer for you unfortunately um question from Tanasha what if we apply ptri manure with molasses will it resolve the conversion of nitrogen to nitrate as we try to increase the carbon content in the polri Manure um so

that will help but I would actually suggest adding um humic substances to the POU manure instead of molasses that's going to give you a rapid um carbon Spike and bump what is the op another follow-up question here from Neils what's the optimum timing for soil apply nitrogen to wheat uh 40 units is permitted additional folur are also permitted up to 40 units what's the best form of n to Apply to the soil um my preference is ammonium sulfate and Ura um dependent on what's going on in a specific soil and that's your last question your

first question what's the optimal timing that also depends on what's going on with that soil and stage of crop but I would say it is going to be um after breaking spring dorcy um generally usually a couple weeks after dorcy break question from from um Miss Anonymous if you don't have access to humic carb would higher concentrations of humic acid products extracted using pottassium hydroxide be required in the nitrogen efficiency program yes uh we've found that um the very best humic acid products it takes at least 5% uh to match 3% of of humic carb

and most it requires upwards of 8% so there's definitely a jump up question from Eric while we're trying to transition to biologically based inputs We are still seeing better yields with 28% liquid nitrogen and wheat than we are with non-synthetic forms of inputs what does the ecosystem hold back that is keeping us from being able to show the results that we believe but just haven't seen yet um Eric I'd need to know a lot more for me to be able to answer your question um but if the short answer is if you're still seeing better

yields with liquid In then that means your soil biology hasn't yet recovered to the ability to be able to supply the majority of the crops nitrogen requirements so uh I'd start asking lots of questions about timing and quantities What's the timing of your applications are those applications being buffered out and um what are the amounts being applied relative to the CR props needs so those are the types of questions that I'd start asking to try to figure that Out and if you want to reach up reach out to the aea team I'd be happy to

have a follow-up conversation and dig deeper into that with you uh question from Bo can you ex Hi bo uh can you explain the difference between Ura and methylene Ura yes I think I can uh if I yeah I've used a product with Ura methylene Ura and triazone for fol your applications um you're not going to be Happy with the explanation bow um triazone ARA is produced using a reaction with formalde and something else I forget what it is right now I dug deeply uh David Miller also gets a lot of the credit the two

of us dug into this quite a bit a couple of years ago when we were working with um strawberry growers in Florida and uh we made a recommendation for Ura Applications they uh were fertig gating on plastic with drip irrigation um they were fertig gating it started fertig gating with triazone Ura and we got a significant drop in microbial activity and an overall plant health and energy it just like we had a negative effect noticeable negative effect to the triazone Ura and yet we're having positive effects where uh quote unquote conventional Ura is being Applied

and so we dug into what is triazone ARA and how is it different and why is it different and uh it's a different manufacturing process it's manufactured by reacting from alahh with one or a couple of other ingredients I I forget now and supposedly uh the formaly completely disappears and is converted during the manufacturing process well I have no basis for disagreeing with that uh I don't know but what I do know without Any doubt is that triazone Ura did a number on soil biology it really suppressed soil biology in some very significant ways so

my advice would be [Laughter] run question from Matt how do you know when a wheat crop needs nitrogen yes we do use sap analysis and even right after right after dorcy break when you have leaves that are just uh 5 to six inches tall or long we'll start pulling samples That'll be our when our first sample is pulled uh Daniel I've never heard of uh 21% Ura being available can it be made by mixing dry Ura into water so yes when you mix dry Ura into water uh into hot water at its maximum concentration you

can create a a 21% uh liquid Ura um it's not widely commonly advertised as being available uh we have a number of Growers that we've worked with whose suppliers have uh been mixing it up for them and um it's going back to the conversation About a pound of Ura a pound of nitrogen not being a pound of nitrogen getting Ura liquefied for you will definitely be more expensive per unit of nitrogen but based on the amount of money spent for nitrogen versus the crop response it usually produces the greatest Roi and the greatest economic crop

response uh let me see question from Austin when is the right time to apply turkey manure in corn um Austin it Depends on your soil carbon content and the application rates of turkey Manor um I would suggest a spring application but uh there's a lot of context there that's going to be important um please reach out to our team and happy to dig into that a bit in a bit more detail a question from Nick is apply nitrogen to a cover crop an agronomically and economically efficient Way to feed the subsequent crop um Nick the

answer is it can be sometimes it depends it depends on the type of cover crop is it a legum is it uh a grass it depends on the stage of maturity at which you incorporate that cover crop or in which stage you kill it um if it's young and relatively immature the nitrogen is going to release pretty quickly and it's quite effective if it's very mature it's going to be a lot less effective so again lots of variation There um can't give you a good answer other than to say that yes it can be if

it's managed to deliver that outcome um Frederick asks for my thoughts on nitrogen and rainwater it's my main source of water in the homestead my understanding is it's usually I don't think we usually have much nitrogen in rain water as I understand it it can be in well water mostly um question from Matt our chalky soils have high pH how can we get Calcium into our crops so this is deviating from the topic a little bit but I'll bring it back to nitrogen a you can make sure that your plants only absorb ammonium not nitrate

B uh address Boron and make sure that you have generous levels of boron and C um you might need to use sulfur to try to bring the pH levels down a little bit uh question from John uh we apply the aea nitrogen program in the fall and John is growing stone fruit in California we often also apply a soil primer program how much time should we give between the two applications um well John the the two would have a synergistic effect and not an antagonistic effect so um I would say generally um you can time

you can tie them as close as five days to a week apart up to a couple weeks apart um but I would expect you would see synergistic effects and not uh not antagonistic effects Question from Maran um how do you like infer liquid fertilizer or 2 by two liquid or dry some record Growers claim corn root should find the Food Source before the ceiling gets out of the ground um so the the short answer is I like infero applications or 2 by two applications of Plant Nutrition I just don't think that those applications should contain

high levels of soluble Nitrogen because that's going to um limit or slow the rise ofi process so I think in terms of positioning and timing those are great applications but I wouldn't want them to be high do nitrogen applications uh question from Craig is the hey test used for determining if a plan is taking up biological nitrogen uh no the answer to that would be well I guess to some degree The Haney test will be used to determine what forms of Nitrogen are in the soil profile and then you can use a sap analysis to

determine whether the plant is actually taking up enough nitrogen is there a benefit to adding humac carb Andor the full nitrogen efficiency products to Poulter meal typical analysis is 10 um humic carb maybe it Bryce it depends on timing uh crops depends on the amount of carbon that's In your soil again there's just lots of variation here um for organic Growers how would you adapt your product recommendations um in general if we're the big question is what is does your soil have enough sulfur and does it have enough carbon to assimilate all of the quote

unquote organic nitrogen that you're adding without having it converted to nitrate if the Answer is yes then you're likely to get limited economic response to the nitrogen efficiency program but if the answer is no uh then it'll be very worthwhile so I would suggest um perhaps adding gypsum in with your 10 z00 as a source of sulfur or another form of sulfur if that's more relevant for your soil context and I would suggest adding humic substances like humac carb um so if you have sandier soils or if you have soils with Low carbon availability then

I would definitely add an adapted version of the nitrogen program to an organic uh situation to an organic application that's a great question Bryce thank you uh John warmerdam came back with uh followup on uh my comments on triazone uh triazone Ura is a reaction of Ura from alahh and ammonium I'd expect that what it might convert to in the plant appli as a fure might work out but the soil is going to break down to its Components is thank you John for that uh for that research and checking that out and bringing that to

the conversation is there a worse product to put in your soil than from Malahide uh yeah probably I would say an hydros ammonia and fumigate fumigant are uh probably match it in terms of uh negative crop response or soil response for the long term so um that's my opinion anyway so I want to say thank you to all of you for being here and for sticking around um wow it's An hour over time I hope that you found this useful and informative and um we're going to do another webinar On a related topic to this

in the next couple of weeks hasn't been announced yet but uh please sign up to our newsletter and uh if you've found this useful then I would really invite you to share it with your neighbors and friends and get more people to show up for the next one because that's how we all make A difference in the world is sharing what we've learned and what we know with others so thank you all for being here have an awesome growing season we'll talk to all of you again soon