Blog

See the latest news, innovation updates, trial results, grower stories and more from Agricen. 
Looking Beyond Applied Nitrogen for Enhanced Nutrient Use Efficiency
April 30, 2025 — Posted By Agricen

04-25-CropLife-webinar-archiveHow can you more effectively manage your nitrogen investment and enhance nitrogen use efficiency on your farm?

Watch our on-demand webinar, "Looking Beyond Applied Nitrogen for Enhanced Nutrient Use Efficiency," to learn:

  • How a new, sustainable nitrogen management tool, N-FINITY, can improve nitrogen use efficiency in crop production programs
  • How N-FINITY provides multiple ways to access biological nitrogen from the soil
  • Details from recent corn, soybean, and wheat trials

N-FINITY is a cutting-edge nitrogen use efficiency technology formulated with three modes of action to "Deliver Nitrogen, Naturally." Designed for concentrated soil applications, N-FINITY can be used in any crop that benefits from supplemental nitrogen, including corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, and wheat.

N-FINITY gives crops access to biological nitrogen through direct nitrogen fixation, recruitment of nitrogen fixers to associate with plant roots, and liberation of organic nitrogen in the soil. These three modes of action provide a versatile solution that can enhance nitrogen use efficiency across a wide range of field and environmental conditions.

N-FINITY is available from Loveland Products through Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Watch the webinar today to learn how N-FINITY can help you improve nitrogen use efficiency in your crop production program. 

Watch the Webinar

Read More
[Interview] A New Advancement in Sustainable Nitrogen Management
April 9, 2025 — Posted By Agricen

nfinity-wityAgricen’s Scott Lay sat with Dennis Michelsen of WITY Radio to discuss a new sustainable nitrogen management tool, N-FINITY, and how it can help growers improve nitrogen use efficiency.

Dennis - WITY Radio: When prices are low, you need more bushels. I think that's what N-FINITY is going to help folks do.

Scott - Agricen: For any farmer, once you say the word “nitrogen,” you have their attention. In terms of a fertility investment, nitrogen is the largest line item. To grow an acre of corn with today's prices, a farmer is looking at spending somewhere in the range of $100 to $130 per acre on nitrogen.

N-FINITY, which we started developing in 2020, is now available from Loveland Products through Nutrien Ag Solutions retail locations. It is a biological technology that enhances nitrogen use efficiency by making naturally occurring forms of nitrogen more available to the crop so that we're not as dependent on synthetic forms of nitrogen.

Dennis - WITY Radio: By using a product like this, you are helping to be a good neighbor on the environmental side, but it’s also helping the farmer, because if you lose nitrogen out of the tiles, that nitrogen isn't doing you any good.

Scott - Agricen: The yardstick we will use to measure the effectiveness of N-FINITY is “What are the pounds of applied nitrogen per bushel?” If a grower is at one pound of applied nitrogen per bushel of yield, our objective is to make that more efficient, to lower the amount of applied nitrogen needed to produce a bushel.

One way to do that is to increase yield by providing more natural nitrogen to the crop. The second, in cases where it makes sense, is to responsibly reduce the amount of applied synthetic nitrogen by a modest amount, perhaps anywhere from 5 to 20 percent. In either scenario, N-FINITY can help deliver a better return on investment and a better result environmentally for the farmer.

Dennis - WITY Radio: While N-FINITY is new to farmers this year, it has been tested. Have you found that it works better with certain types of fertilizer programs?

Scott - Agricen: We've designed it to be compatible with farmers’ real practices. At planting, N-FINITY can be applied in furrow or two by two. As the season progresses, it can be applied with a liquid sidedress or Y drop nitrogen application.

Many sustainable nitrogen management technologies that have been introduced over the last few years utilize one mode of action, which is fixing atmospheric nitrogen. With N-FINITY, we have three modes of action so that we can provide even more biological forms of nitrogen to the plant. N-FINITY not only fixes atmospheric nitrogen like other technologies, it also liberates organic pools of nitrogen found in the soil and it helps recruit native nitrogen-fixing microbes in the soil into the plant.

Further, N-FINITY works in both a full nitrogen rate regime and in a regime where a modest reduction of nitrogen is employed, which reduces the cost outlay for synthetic nitrogen and helps to offset the investment in N-FINITY. We think that's a win-win situation for the grower.

Dennis - WITY Radio: Nitrogen can be finicky. Do you know how N-FINITY is going to work in really dry or wet conditions?

Scott - Agricen: Over the last two years, we've had the opportunity to observe N-FINITY in 344 different field environments in replicated and split-farm trials in corn, soybeans and wheat. The performance has been very consistent across a wide range of weather circumstances and growing environments. The average yield response has been +7.9 bushels an acre.

Dennis - WITY Radio: What type of ROI are you seeing?

Scott - Agricen: As I look at today's prices, December corn is recorded at $4.50 a bushel. Stating the obvious, it will be challenging to make money in corn. However, with that nearly eight-bushel average yield response with N-FINITY, we’re seeing a positive ROI of about three to one.

N-FINITY is available from Nutrien Ag Solutions.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the interview below or on Agricen's YouTube channel.

Read More
How Do Microbes Influence Nitrogen Use Efficiency?
January 6, 2020 — Posted By Agricen

green cornMany growers apply the “4R” framework for nutrient management—using the right fertilizer source, at the right rate, at the right time and in the right place—to more closely match crop nutrient needs to fertilization practices while supporting sustainable agriculture goals.

Guided by this framework, growers have been able to improve their fertilizer use efficiency and reduce nutrient loss to the environment. However, despite best practices, an estimated 40% to 50% of applied nitrogen is either immobilized by soil microorganisms or lost from the soil through denitrification or leaching, rendering it unavailable to the crop.

Download Agricen's Soil Microbiology & Biochemistry Booklet

Although some soil microorganisms contribute to nitrogen loss or immobilization in the soil, others can have a positive influence on nitrogen use efficiency by enhancing the availability or stability of nitrogen in the soil or by enhancing root growth and physiological functions.

How Microbes Affect Nitrogen Use Efficiency

Bacteria and other microorganisms—through their metabolic processes—exude or secrete a wide range of biochemical compounds (called primary and secondary metabolites) into the soil. These biochemicals are not simply the waste or byproducts of metabolic functions. They are the tools through which microorganisms communicate and function in the soil. Some of the ways they can influence nitrogen use efficiency are by:

Complexing nitrogen into organic forms. Biochemical compounds exuded by bacteria and other microorganisms can influence nitrogen transformations. They can also promote the combination of nitrogen into more complex organic compounds, such as amino sugars, amino acids, and proteins, which can induce a metabolic response in other microorganisms and plants.
Keeping nitrogen in plant-available forms. Biochemical compounds in the soil can help keep or convert nitrogen into a plant-available form. One of the well-understood mechanisms of conversion is mineralization, which is the conversion of organic nitrogen to plant-available ammonium. Although not all of the exact mechanisms of conversion or transformation through which this occurs have been uncovered, it is thought that the biochemicals in the soil might also influence the conversion of nitrate back into an ammonium form, or even the transformation of ammonia back into ammonium or amino compounds.
Enhancing root growth and root physiological functions. Roots can respond to signals from biochemical compounds in many ways, including by increasing growth and branching, increasing the uptake of nutrients such as nitrogen, or limiting the uptake of compounds such as salt ions. Roots can also respond to biochemical signaling in the soil biochemistry by making changes to their own exudates. This can have an effect on rhizosphere bacterial functions that, in turn, may help make nutrients more available to the plant. 

Helping Growers Improve Nitrogen Use Efficiency

To gain greater nitrogen use efficiency, growers who are already using the 4R framework and similar practices can utilize additional tools and technologies to aid with soil health, plant health and nutrient efficiency. Available technologies not only include enhanced efficiency fertilizers, nitrogen stabilizers and nitrogen inhibitors, but also biochemical tools like fertilizer biocatalysts, which make use of biochemical mechanisms to directly stimulate bacterial, nutrient and plant functioning. 

Learn more about fertilizer biocatalysts

The fertilizer biocatalyst ACCOMPLISH MAX can effectively convert applied nitrogen into plant-available forms to increase nutrient availability and facilitate nitrogen uptake by the plant, as seen in this pivotal study with the original ACCOMPLISH formulation. Similarly, EXTRACT PBA is a biocatalyst that can be used to release nutrients that are tied up in the soil, hasten residue breakdown and facilitate the cycling of nutrients—including nitrogen—back into the soil.

A new tool, N-FINITY, is also available to growers who are seeking to improve nitrogen use efficiency. N-FINITY contains microbes and microbial metabolites that give crops access to biological nitrogen through direct nitrogen fixation, recruitment of nitrogen fixers to associate with plant roots and liberation of organic nitrogen in the soil. These three modes of action provide a versatile solution that can enhance nitrogen use efficiency across a wide range of field and environmental conditions.

Learn more about N-FINITY

By helping to ensure that more of the nitrogen a grower applies gets into the crop, these technologies can increase nitrogen use efficiency. 

Learn more about the influence of soil biochemistry on plant health and nutrition by downloading the 'Understanding Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry' booklet.

Download the Booklet

 

Read More
<< Prev
1
Next >>