Ron Calhoun, PhD, Senior Manager for Plant Nutrition at Loveland Products, sat with AgriTalk’s Chip Flory to discuss the challenges that cool weather can bring when growers add dry nutrition to the soil during the fall.

Ron - Loveland Products: As we put our dry fertilizers like MAP, DAP, potash, and MESZ in the fall to get ready for next year, those dry materials need to be mineralized by the microbial communities in the soil for the nutrients in them to be available to our plants. Cool conditions in the fall and spring don't really propel that process forward, so that can limit the efficiency of those products. The mineralization process needs assistance to overcome the depressed microbial activity.

Chip - AgriTalk: Where does that assistance come from? Is it biochemistry?

Ron - Loveland Products: You're exactly right. We have a dry fertilizer enhancement product called Titan XC, and it is using that biochemistry from the soil microbial community to make the nutrition more available. We take that biochemistry and we'll actually sparge it onto the dry fertilizer ahead of time.

Jason Jaggers is a third-generation corn and soybean farmer in Wyanet, Illinois. When it comes to getting advice from his Nutrien Ag Solutions agronomist, Chad Taylor, he knows he has someone he can count on. Chad is not only his agronomist, but also his childhood friend. 

"Chad and I grew up together. Now he's my Nutrien agronomist. If he brings a product to me, he knows it better perform," says Jason. "He's also a grower himself, so he understands that."

Two of the products that Chad has introduced to Jason are Titan XC and Extract PBA. They are biocatalyst technologies that help growers "do more with less" by enhancing nutrient use efficiency. 

"As he's brought Titan, Extract and multiple other products to the table, they've all performed very, very well," says Jason. 

In the fall, Titan XC on dry fertilizer is a particularly important part of the equation. 

"If you're making a fall application of fertilizer, it needs Titan XC," say Chad. "Titan brings multiple levels of benefit...being able to take a growers fertilizer dollar and increase it by upwards of 20 percent."

On Chad's recommendation, Jason has used Titan XC on his fall dry fertilizer for the past decade.

Agricen's Scott Lay recently spoke with Dennis Michelsen of WITY Radio about using Titan XC on fall-applied dry fertilizer blends.

Dennis - WITY Radio: In the fall season, we always talk about Titan XC. Talk a little bit about how it helps growers get the most out of fall fertilizer applications.

Scott - Agricen: Titan XC is applied on dry phosphorus and potash to help mineralize and break down those fertilizer prills, making them more available for next year's crop.

How can growers enhance the efficiency of their fall-applied dry fertilizer blends to maximize yield and return on investment? 

Watch our on-demand webinar, "How to Enhance Dry Fertilizer Efficiency to Maximize Yield & ROI," to hear:

• How to enhance the efficiency of your fall dry fertilizer application
  
  
• What you can do to improve nutrient recovery after applying dry fertilizer blends
  
  
• How to increase yield and return on investment in any crop production system with Titan XC on your dry fertilizer blend

Fall can be a good time to apply dry phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) fertilizers because of lower workloads and drier soils. A fall dry fertilizer application can also increase P and K availability for crops planted in the spring by giving the fertilizer prill more time to undergo natural weathering and breakdown in the soil compared to spring applications.

However, just because you apply 300 pounds of P and K this fall, it doesn’t mean that all 300 pounds will be available to next season's crop. Soil physical, chemical and biological properties combined with weather conditions all play a role in fertilizer availability. Even under the best conditions, an application of dry fertilizer on its own is usually not very efficient. In the first season after application, only about 10-30% of applied P and 20-60% of applied K is typically available for use by the growing crop.

For a higher rate of fertilizer efficiency, Titan XC can be applied to dry fertilizer blends, increasing the efficiency of applied P and K fertilizers by an estimated 30%. This contributes to a number of benefits, including improved plant performance (as seen in the photos below from Dassel, Minnesota), as well as a positive yield response.

Chad Henderson, an XtremeAg farmer in Madison, Alabama, trialed Titan XC-treated dry fertilizer on his farm in 2022. He saw impressive results in both his irrigated and dryland corn. 

"We can't wait to try this again," says Chad. "We had great results with this product."

In the trial, Chad compared his standard strip till fertilizer blend to the same fertilizer blend treated with Titan XC at 1 pint per ton.  Both treated and untreated fertilizer blends were applied at 180 pounds per acre. Two different hybrids were in the planter, and each treatment (treated vs untreated dry fertilizer) was replicated 3 times for each hybrid in both irrigated and non-irrigated parts of the field.

In irrigated corn, Chad's average corn yield was 276.7 bu/a with his standard fertilizer blend and 293.8 bu/a with the Titan XC-treated dry fertilizer, for a yield advantage of +17.1 bu/a compared to the check. 

How can growers make the most of every nutrient they apply, especially with high fertilizer costs? One way is to focus on improving the efficiency of dry fertilizers that are spread in the fall or spring.

Watch our on-demand webinar, "How to Make Your Dry Fertilizer Work Harder and Go Farther," to learn:

• Why the amount of fertilizer you apply doesn't always equate to the amount of fertility available to your crop
  
  
• How next-generation technology can enhance your fall dry fertilizer program for better nutrient availability and uptake in the spring
  
  
• How Titan XC can help you get more out of every prill you’ve paid for by giving your crop greater access to applied fertility
  
  

With fall fertilizer season approaching, Agricen’s Scott Lay spoke with WITY Radio about using Titan XC to get more efficiency and return on investment out of dry fertilizer applications. 

Dennis - WITY Radio: I think Titan XC is going to be a great addition to producers' game plans here in the fall.

Scott - Agricen: Titan XC has been available for about 10 years now. With each successive fall, use increases as folks better understand the benefits of what a fertilizer efficiency technology can provide for their operations.

Evan Matlock, a farmer from Greenfield, Indiana, first started using Titan XC on his farm about five years ago. In his first year of testing it, he applied Titan XC-treated dry fertilizer on a partial field of soybeans and a partial field of corn. There was an obvious difference between the parts of the field where Titan XC had and had not been applied.

“You could see it visually and we saw it on aerial imagery throughout the year,” he says. “When we took it to harvest, the corn stood out about 4.8 bushels better (with Titan XC) and the soybeans were 2.8 bushels better.”

With those results, Evan had a feeling that Titan XC might be a product he wanted to implement on a broader scale at the farm. That next year, he tested Titan XC-treated dry fertilizer on about half of his acres.

“The next year, we continued to see a yield increase,” he says.

Five years later, he uses Titan XC-treated fertilizer on every acre at Matlock Farms.

When Illinois farmer Benjamin Rice first heard about Titan XC, he thought it sounded too good to be true. But he was trying to find a way to increase the efficiency of the dry fertilizer he was spreading on his farm, so he decided to take it to the field and try it.

Benjamin took two different 80-acre fields, split them in half, and spread the north half of each field with Titan XC-treated dry fertilizer and the south half with untreated dry fertilizer in the fall. He also took two different 40-acre fields and did the same, but spread the treated and untreated dry fertilizer in the spring.

He wanted to commit multiple years to the trial to see if Titan XC consistently worked. For three years, he repeated the side by side trials on the same fields.

“We’re on a corn and beans crop rotation. After the first year I saw a yield increase consistently on the side of the field treated with Titan XC,” he says. “After all three years, both spread in the fall or spread in the spring, my field averages made 6.8 bushel better on corn and 2.6 bushel better on beans.”