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For the past several years, Chris Perkins, a grower and Nutrien Ag Solutions location manager in Otwell, Indiana, has been running an experimental, high management, continuous corn plot using several products in the Loveland Products portfolio, including Accomplish LM and Titan, so that he can prove the value of the products he sells to his customers.

Many of the decisions that Chris makes in the management of his plot are driven by ongoing research at the university level, primarily that of Dr. Fred Below of the Crop Physiology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

We spoke to Chris to learn more about how he uses biocatalyst products to tap into nutrients in his field, bring up fertility levels, and sustain a healthy soil structure under his corn on corn acres. We also spoke to Dr. Below to hear his take on the success Chris has had raising soil fertility levels and crop productivity. Watch the video to hear from Chris and Dr. Below. 

In this field trial on corn, root digs show a more developed root system in plants fertilized with Titan XC-impregnated dry fertilizer compared to untreated dry fertilizer. The corn trial was conducted by Nutrien Ag Solutions in New Brunswick, Indiana. 

Photos from the trial also show that stalks are denser and healthier with the Titan XC biocatalyst applied to the grower's dry fertilizer.

All photos were taken in early July.

Learn more about using Titan XC to enhance your dry fertilizer application by downloading our fertilizer breakdown study.

Many technologies and practices play a role in helping farmers protect soil and improve water quality. At Black Hawk Lake in Iowa, that's making a difference. 

Watch the video to learn more, and to see how Accomplish LM is helping:

 

 

 

 

 

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Although it’s tempting for growers to put out all of their nitrogen early in the season when it’s easier to apply, splitting the application into a pre-plant and a sidedress application can be an effective way to ensure that the corn crop has enough nitrogen to meet its needs at peak demand. This can be especially beneficial in wet years where leaching of pre-plant nitrogen is likely to have occurred.

Peak nitrogen demand for corn is right before tassel and continues through grain fill, a period that corresponds with the V8 through VT/R1 corn growth stages. Generally, 1 to 1.1 lbs of nitrogen per bushel of corn is a good way to estimate total crop need for the season. However, the applied nitrogen still has to be taken up by the plant to deliver yield. Sidedressing with supplemental nitrogen by V6 (right before the crop’s nitrogen needs are greatest) allows growers to better manage this critical input. 

Growers can use Extract PBA as a supplemental technology with their sidedress nitrogen application to increase nutrient availability and facilitate uptake. This technology can be used alone or combined with a nitrogen stabilizer to help protect the applied nitrogen from denitrification and leaching.

Learn more about using biocatalyst technology to enhance a sidedress nitrogen application by downloading the Sidedressing Nitrogen for Maximum Yields booklet.

Below we answer three common questions on corn nitrogen demands and discuss ways to make the most efficient sidedress application.

When does a corn crop need most of its nitrogen?

Growers often want to put nitrogen out early in the season—when it is easier to apply—to get their corn crop “up and going.” However, actual peak nitrogen demand for corn is right before tassel (V10 – V14), continuing on through grain fill. Making a sidedress nitrogen application can be an effective way of making sure the crop has the nitrogen it needs when demand is greatest.

Scott Lay recently spoke to Hoosier Ag Today about Extract PBA and how it can help maximize soybean yield potential when used with a pre-emerge herbicide or fertilizer application this spring. 

Hoosier Ag Today: Extract is a biocatalyst that helps make nutrients in the soil available to crops. Scott Lay from Loveland Products explains. 

Lay: Really what Extract does is frees up or mineralizes nutrients that are already bound in the soil. It helps to decompose residue, which is essentially nutrients awaiting to be utilized by the plant. It simply accelerates that process that Mother Nature is already performing, by helping to decompose and mineralize more nutrients, putting them in a plant available form so that we can maximize yield in a given crop.

Hoosier Ag Today: With concerns about nutrient levels in soil this spring, this product may be helpful in improving yield, especially in soybeans. 

Lay: We're able to introduce it with a pre-plant herbicide and/or fertilizer type application. Our results have been very consistent in soybeans. We've averaged about a 4 bushel per acre response in soybeans when we've utilized Extract.

Hoosier Ag Today: Lay says the product works all season long and can help make sure that adequate nutrients are available later in the season during the critical yield determination period.

Lay: We're able to extend the nutrient mineralization process throughout the season to provide a more adequate flow of nutrients to the soybean plant during the critical yield determining time through July and even into August.

Hoosier Ag Today: Ask about Extract at your local co-op or Nutrien Ag Solutions store.

You can read the article at Hoosier Ag Today. You can also listen to the full interview in the video.

Download the Extract soybean study to see how Extract has performed in recent soybean trials across the Midwest.

One of the key ways to positively impact soybean and corn yields is by optimizing nutrient availability to the growing crop throughout the season. A number of trials conducted across the Midwest show that an application of Extract PBA is an effective and consistent way to achieve this.

By helping to mineralize soil nutrients more effectively and getting more nutrition into soybean and corn crops, Extract PBA can enhance crop vigor and yields, as seen in the soybean and corn trials shown below.

An aerial image from that same soybean trial clearly shows where an application of Extract was made.

Nutrien Ag Solutions crop consultants note that, on average and under current market conditions, it requires only a 1.2 bushel yield increase in soybeans and a 3.5 bushel yield increase in corn to make an Extract investment break even. As you can see from the trials above and additional trials in soybeans and corn, there is a high probability of positive net return. 

Learn more about using Extract PBA to enhance nutrient release in your fields by accessing the Extract PBA booklet.

What can Midwest growers do to ensure they will get good performance from their soybeans? Scott Lay recently discussed this issue with RFD IL Radio Network, including how a spring application of Loveland’s Extract PBA biocatalyst can help optimize soybean yield potential.

RFD: How do we get the best performance out of soybeans? The product that we’re talking about is Extract. First things first, Scott, what is Extract?

Scott Lay: Extract is a fertilizer biocatalyst that we are positioning in soybeans, and it is unique to Nutrien Ag Solutions/Loveland Products. Extract is designed to help speed up nutrient mineralization and free up additional fertility for the growing crop so it can realize its full yield potential.

RFD: Interesting that it’s a fertilizer biocatalyst, but it’s not applied with fertilizer. How does that work?

Scott: It is often applied with liquid fertilizers, particularly in corn and wheat. But in this instance, we are applying it with soybean herbicides. This is simply because across Illinois and the greater part of the Midwest, fertilizing for a soybean crop isn’t an established practice. The presence of Extract allows growers to mineralize more nutrients, pulling in more of the nutrients from the soil that already exist there.

RFD: So Extract is in a liquid form?

Scott: It is in a liquid form, so it’s very easy to use, and it can be tank-mixed with virtually any combination of herbicides and/or liquid fertilizers.

RFD: So if I’m about to perform my burndown as I anticipate planting, I can tank mix it and be off and running?

Scott: That’s correct. It’s best use in terms of timing in soybeans is early season, either prior to planting the crop or, in some instances, immediately after planting the crop, but prior to emergence.

RFD: Sometimes just getting soybeans to emerge can be a challenge, so I assume this helps with that?

Scott: Very much so, and I think you hit it right on the head. Soybeans are a little more of a fragile crop relative to corn, particularly early season. Getting that even and consistent emergence–that early season vigor and plant health–is very critical, not just in terms of establishing stand count, but also in allowing each and every plant to realize more of its yield potential come September and October.

RFD: I was looking at some notes here about Extract delivering nutrients to the plant when yield is determined. 

Scott: Soybeans are a complex biological bean. While early season emergence is critical, nutrient availability is key in terms of determining the yield of that soybean crop. Ninety percent of all nutrients consumed in a soybean plant are taken up from bloom through physiological maturity. When we utilize Extract, we've found that there are more nutrients in a plant-available form throughout the season, including into that July/August timeframe when most nutrients are consumed.

RFD: So we put it in now, and later we have those nutrients available. The nutrients are already in that soil, so it’s just a matter of getting them into that crop?

Scott: That’s very true. Step one, of course, is applying nutrients. Certainly a number of dollars are expended in that effort. But that’s not always a guarantee that the nutrients find themselves in a plant-available form that the crop can utilize. Extract, while it’s not magic, simply accelerates that process of releasing nutrients that are otherwise bound up by metals and calcium, and perhaps limited by pH or weather. It helps make the plant more efficient in its end result.

RFD: You have done trials?

Scott: We have a lot of trials. Over the last several years, a number of land grant institutions across the Midwest, other third-parties and our folks at Nutrien Ag Solutions Services have conducted probably in the range of 100 to 150 trials so far. We’ve seen some very consistent results when we’ve used Extract.

RFD:  What about return on investment? Would this lead to an increased yield bump? Because it is still an input, so we would need to cover that input.

Scott: Well said, it's absolutely an input. We recognize that the name of the game is return on investment. What we’ve found across our trials and from in-field use is that the positive yield result has averaged right at about 4.5 bushels per acre of increased soybean yield. It’s a very consistent return on investment given the minimal cost for Extract. In relative terms, it costs about 1.2 bushels of increased yield to pay for the Extract application.

RFD: Where does one find Extract?

Scott: You can find the product at any Nutrien Ag Solutions retail store across the Midwest, and our local sales representatives and agronomists would be happy to have a discussion about Extract and how it may potentially fit into a particular farmer’s operation.

Listen to the Interview.

You can also download the Extract soybean study to see how Extract performs in soybean trials across the Midwest.

Ty Higgins of Ohio AgNet sat down with Scott Lay to discuss soybean nutrient needs and how Extract PBA can increase nutrient release to help improve soybean fertility.

AgNet: Typically, it’s not practical to spend similar money on fertilizing soybeans as it is on fertilizing corn. But this year, there might be a change of thought in that area.

Scott Lay: One thing we like to talk about as it relates to yield in soybeans is identifying limiting factors. Often, that limiting factor for soybeans is the availability of nutrients.

More often than not, a lot more effort related to fertility is focused on corn, which certainly makes good sense. But we can’t forget about that soybean crop and its nutrient needs that exist throughout the season. So we’re always trying to find ways to optimize nutrient availability to the growing crop throughout the season, so that we’re able to impact yield.

AgNet: That’s where a product from Loveland Products and Nutrien Ag Solutions comes into play.

Scott: We have a product called Extract that is a fertilizer biocatalyst product with some ammonium thiosulfate. Through several years’ worth of university testing and internal trials across the Midwest, we've found that we’re able to impact early season vigor and emergence and get a more even stand as the crop comes out of the ground, which is certainly important. But as the season goes on, nutrient availability to the plant is oftentimes a limiting factor, one that can be impacted by weather. For example, dryer conditions can impact the ability of the plant to utilize nutrients. The Extract technology helps to mineralize nutrients more effectively, getting more into the plant at the time when yield is determined, later in the growing season.

We have dozens of third-party trials of Extract, as well as real-life farmer split-field type of comparisons. What our research has found is that the average yield response is about 4.3 bushels, and 85 percent of the time we get a net positive yield response.

At the end of the day, I think that’s what anyone is looking for–a consistent technology that performs and that delivers a positive return on investment.

AgNet: And those results don’t discriminate between tillage practices.

Scott: We've found across a wide range of tillage practices–from clean tillage at one end of the spectrum to no-till on the other end–that nutrient availability is compromised regardless of the amount of residue.

In instances where there is more crop residue from the prior year, we have to recognize that there are a lot of nutrients bound up in that stalk residue. The biocatalyst component of Extract helps to accelerate the breakdown of that residue.

You’ve already paid for those nutrients, so it’s a way to help accelerate that breakdown process and get more nitrogen, phosphorus and potash into that growing soybean crop.

Listen to the Interview.

You can also download the Extract soybean study to see how Extract performs in soybean trials across the Midwest.

AgWatch spoke with Kent Moore, Proprietary Products Manager with Loveland Products and Nutrien Ag Solutions, about upcoming spring soybean programs and how they can benefit soybean farmers.

Kent Moore: "A program that we’re looking at running with many of our growers is a product called Extract from Loveland Products, which we will combine with and put in with our soybean residual products as we burn down in front of soybeans. 

The soybean residual products from Loveland that we’re looking at are Matador and Intimidator, two proven products that are excellent at controlling small seed broadleafs, pigweeds species, and ragweeds. We’re pairing those up with an application of Extract, which is a combination of our unique biochemical fertilizer catalyst and ammonium thiosulfate.

Extract helps enhance and speed up the rate of nutrient mineralization and release in the soil so that more nutrients are available to the plant for uptake this season, which should lead to overall enhanced plant performance and yield."

Listen to the Interview.

Download the Extract PBA soybean bulletin to see how Extract has performed in soybean trials across the Midwest.