Biological soil fertility products for corn and soybeans: How should farmers be thinking about them?
Hello and welcome back to Advancing Nitrogen Smart, the special podcast series from University of Minnesota Extension. I'm Jack Wilcox in Extension Communications.
Jack Wilcox:Here with me today are Brad Carlson, Extension Educator, and Daniel Kaiser, Extension Nutrient Management Specialist.
Jack Wilcox:Today, we continue to talk about crop biostimulants. Guys, there have been a lot of new crop biostimulant products over the years, as you well know. You get a lot of questions about them. What are crop biostimulant products?
Daniel Kaiser:Well, it's been kind of an emerging, or evolving situation in The US, as to bio stimulants. You know, The US has been behind, some other parts of the world, particularly Europe, in that, we haven't really had a good legal definition of bio stimulants. So that's why we've seen a lot in the marketplace is mostly that there hasn't been a lot of regulations, on it. So, you know, they've been something that's it's really been booming the last, I would say, five years. I mean, it's been, you know, since 2020, a little bit before that.
Daniel Kaiser:We started kinda hearing some of these products come on the market. And, you know, Europe's always been ahead of us on this. You know, kinda how they've defined things is, that "plant biostimulants contain substances and or microorganisms whose function when applied to plants are the rhizosphere that the rhizosphere, which is the area around the roots, is to stimulate natural processes to enhance or benefit nutrient uptake, increase nutrient efficiency, increase tolerance to abiotic stresses, increase crop quality." It gets to be kind of nebulous in terms of a lot of these definitions, and if you look at a lot of these purported benefits of these particular products. So
Brad Carlson:Well, in, you know, in general, there's been a a larger use of biological products on crops other than corn and soybeans. I mean, we've we've been familiar, of course, with the with using inoculants for soybeans. However, most fields in the Midwest have soybeans on enough of a regular basis. We don't inoculate in general. But there are a lot of products, or I should say a lot of crops, specialty crops particularly in parts of the world that still need them.
Brad Carlson:So there are a lot of firms producing biological type products who've been involved in a lot of these other markets and and, you know, some of these lentils and chickpeas and other things that are kind of mild legumes that don't do a lot of night nitrogen fixing compared to, you know, some of the more aggressive ones. And so a lot of these biological companies have turned their attention towards corn and soybeans because it's a big potential market.
Daniel Kaiser:And, I mean, a lot of these too, you know, as kind of Brad was saying is I mean, you know, some other definitions are are too are substances or microbes that provide in minute quantities, that provide that promote plant growth. They're not fertilizers, pesticides, or soil conditioners. That's important, because there's you know, specifically, there are regulations for things like, fertilizer enhancers and those types of things, that most states have for regulation. And, you know, these biostimulants have been able to get around a lot of this just because of by nature of what they are. The products, I mean, there's been a number of them.
Daniel Kaiser:They've been marketed for many years. There's a regional committee that I'm a part of that was, established back around 1980 to essentially test claims of fertilizer enhancers, would include biostimulants, and then other unconventional products. This is the n c e r a one zero three. There's a website if anybody is interested. It's ncera103.org.
Daniel Kaiser:That's what we call the compendium of nontraditional products. The what we've tried to do on that committee yearly is update the compendium with new research, although we can't keep up with everything. And that's kind of the the big thing about and kind of where the boom is is with some of the the ability for gene sequencing, particularly around the rhizosphere, the area around the roots, there's been a lot of work to identify microorganisms and what they do. And then I try to take advantage of that as much as possible because if you look at a lot and what we'll talk about here, there I mean, a lot of this stuff, I mean, it's it's in the soil. It's there already.
Daniel Kaiser:It's just a question, can we make it work better? That's one of the things, and I'll I'll probably bring this up at the end, the main challenge that we have with a lot of these biostimulants is if you look at kind of naturally the that soil ecosystem and the microorganisms that are there are really developed, you know, based on your climate, your practices, the crops that you were growing, those types of things that, you know, the question is whether or not we can introduce something that's not native, that might, you know, be more of what we call a superbug or something that might, fix more nitrogen than what's naturally there, whether or not they can actually compete. So that's kind of the main thing with it. You know, it's I'd like to see a little more regulation because I think there's a lot of promises out there that, you know, we've talked about in a previous podcast that and in terms of testing and stuff that the information isn't always glowing on these things even though, I mean, the marketing would would, you know, claim these things. They're just they're no doubt, and they'll give you essentially everything that they advertise on a yearly basis.
Brad Carlson:Well, there's a wide range of of you already mentioned wide range of products that are out there, but a wide range companies involved too. I think, you know, using biologicals and the technology surrounding that is kind of a new arena in a lot of ways in the whole US economy. And so there's in in addition to some of our major ag companies, k, beyond that, there's some companies that specialize in biologicals that a lot of farmers haven't ever heard of before, but they're long existing older companies.
Brad Carlson:But then furthermore, there's even been a lot of venture capital that's come in with with some people that, you know, they come out of college and they're geniuses in biology and, you know, they're gonna make a billion dollars or something like that. And so frequently, when you talk about there being new products, some of this stuff just comes flying in out of left field from places we've never even heard of before. And so that's what makes it really difficult to keep track of.
Daniel Kaiser:And it's interesting when you you start, you know, hearing about some of the lab scientists that are working on these things. They just don't understand, you know, why something might not work because they know exactly what these organisms do. It just when you're dealing with a biological system, there's more to it than, you know, just the simple fact that these things are gonna do what they say they're gonna do. I mean, you know, if that's the case, we should be able to just layer a bunch of extra free living end fixers in the soil and we could eliminate nitrogen application entirely, and that's just not the case with it. And if you look at all that's out there, I mean, the different categories, you know, humic substances, humic acids, those have been pretty big, as of late.
Daniel Kaiser:That's kind of in the range of biostimulants. A lot of that is, Leonardite extracts from, you know, Leonardite coal, which, you know, you you look at the amount or what what that actually adds to the soil is pretty miniscule compared to what's there, particularly of organic material in CEC. Amino acids and other nitrogen compounds, amino acids on by their name, amines, have nitrogen in them, so they would supply if they if you broke the amino acid down, you would supply nitrogen directly to a crop with a particular amino acids, but there's some other you know, a lot of reported benefits from that. Chitosins are out there. Those are extracts from the shells of crustaceans.
Daniel Kaiser:I've had a product a couple years ago. It smelled like we were applying a shrimp cocktail to the soil. Needless to say, didn't do anything. And that's you know, kinesins are kinda they're looked at more for abiotic stresses, seaweed extracts. You know, Brad, I know you've kind of been involved with some of the organic, growers in some your earlier days.
Daniel Kaiser:I mean, that's some things I know that they were looking liquid, you know, extracts of seaweed for nitrogen fertilizer sources. The main one right now, and I think the one we'll focus on here is beneficial microorganisms and, you know, bacteria are kind of the main one that are being looked at now with a lot of the products that are out there. When I first started, you know, there are products like Jumpstart which was Penicillium Belae which is a fun fungi which it was reported to be able to solubilize phosphorus in high pH environments. You know, kinda like a lot of these products came and went. It might still be out there and, know, they tend to have a life cycle or give it five, ten more years, it might be out under another trade name.
Daniel Kaiser:So it's kinda what you see with a lot of these things and that's why I mentioned that compendium website, that one zero three web NCR one zero three website because if you know what's in these things, you can go back and look, and I'm I'm sure there's probably been something worked on it in the past to look at, how we utilize some of these things. And the issue with a lot of these is it's a cocktail in a lot of these things too, and that gets where it gets to be a challenge for us to test these things because when you combine a bunch of things together, if you get some response, you know, do you know if if it's one thing or it's multiple working together or or what it is? It gets to be really kind of the challenge.
Daniel Kaiser:Well, part of the problem with that too is just simply that all of these products do work in a greenhouse or in a laboratory setting. Know, you identify a microorganism that does something, that's the thing it does. And if you control the environment and you can, you know, ensure that survival, you can actually see these things function. It's just, as you said, Dan, when it gets out in the field, it just gets overwhelmed with everything else that's out there. I I know there was a trend among organic producers, oh, heavens, twenty years ago plus, and I think it's still out there of of what they call compost tea where they were just simply taking compost, putting water in it, setting it out in the sun, and then they're just going out and spraying that the liquid that was off the top, you know, assuming that it was picking up whatever microorganisms.
Brad Carlson:They didn't even identify them. It was just, you know, whatever might be in there on the field. And, you know, the old adage of there's there's more microorganisms in a shovel full of soil than there are people on the planet Earth is accurate. So you're putting, you know, just as relatively few things out in that field compared to what's already out there, then the question becomes, as you said, can it actually survive? And so that's that's really the issue, you know.
Brad Carlson:You'll see data on this stuff from a greenhouse or a lab, and it did work, and then when it goes out in the field, sometimes it doesn't, then it doesn't work.
Daniel Kaiser:Yeah, and that's one of the things too, and particularly with these beneficial microorganisms, you know, is whether or not they can outcompete. Because many times, the ones that are really good at fixing nitrogen aren't necessarily the ones that are have the greatest survivability or can outcompete some of what's actually there. I mean, it's you know, it seems like some of the ones that are more lazy seem to be able to outcompete and do better than some of these, these organisms.
Daniel Kaiser:And sometimes it's kind of a flash in a pan, where maybe you'll see a benefit earlier, you know, initially, but it just tends to wane over time. You know, and really, you look at these beneficial microorganisms, it is the fastest growing segment, just because, as I mentioned before, the new DNA techniques where we can analyze the soil microbiome and see what's there and, you know, kinda identify what are really good and what are really poor in terms of nitrogen fixers and try to isolate those and, you know, package them, you know, put in then put them right in there close to the roots for that plant with the intention that where they can, you know, keep move or keep, producing, for say, nitrogen to the crop early in the season.
Daniel Kaiser:And a lot of this really is you know, Brad was mentioning the venture capital. It it's a lot of it is really focused around sustainability. Looking at trying to reduce nitrogen fertilizer rates, water quality, and, I mean, really looking at it if it did work, I mean, consistently, I mean, there would be some benefits really there that we could look at, you know, utilizing that. But it's kind of one of the things that it gets to be more of a challenge. You know, Brad mentioned before rhizobium, I mean, we know the practice of microbial inoculation has been used for centuries.
Daniel Kaiser:With soybeans, I mean, the interesting thing, I mean, I'm sure there'll be some people listening to this that have had good luck with, some of these, what we call these non native strains of rhizobium inoculating your soybeans. But, you know, looking at a lot of the data, you know, you can get some, what we've seen is some good initial colonization with some of those those more exotic rhizobium, but they you know, again, they may not necessarily compete. So, I mean, we've have a lot of instances within management where these things have been utilized in the past. It's just a question now. We're really looking at these these where rhizobium are bacteria or what we call, symbiotic bacteria.
Daniel Kaiser:We're looking at what we call a symbiotic or a lot of the stuff now is just looking at free living stuff that's in the soil, which gets to be it's a whole different, you know, you know, quote unquote animal at that point with, the a symbiotic because, you know, it's a lot easier if you've got something that essentially is colonizing a plant. I mean, me, you'd have more likelihood for something like that to be, more successful than just throwing something in the soil and hoping it can survive. So, you know, looking at a lot of these inoculants, some of them can be classified as biopesticides or bio fertilizers, you know, some gray area considering these biocontrol agents. But again, even with some misclassification, there just really isn't a whole lot of lot of guidance right now in the industry in terms of, really how to utilize these things and how to market them to make sure that, everything is being accurately marketed to growers out there. And that's, I think, really the challenge.
Daniel Kaiser:Where I see it is on the research side and the data side is that, you know, there the how we claim these things work, you know, there's really some broad leverage in in terms of how some of these companies have when they when they start looking at, the success of some of these particular products. So a couple examples of beneficial bacteria, the free living nitrogen fixers, there's a number of them out there.
Daniel Kaiser:I mean, azospirilla, azotobacter, some bacillus species, and clostridium species. I mean, we know that if you look at the nitrogen cycle, what comes to the plant in the soil that's not it's taken up, that's not supplied by fertilizer, which can be upwards of about 75% of the nitrogen the corn crop's taking up in a given year, part of that comes from some of these free living bacteria. They are in the soil.
Daniel Kaiser:They do supply some. They just don't have, you know, a whole lot when we start talking about their ability to supply nitrogen. I mean, there's been some research out there in wheat so that azosprillum in close contact with the roots can supply seven to 12% of the n for wheat, and that's a lot, but it's still not everything. So these bacteria we know do something, and we know will supply some of that nitrogen that is not supplied or not needed or that that's taken up by the plant that's not supplied by fertilizer. You know, mentioned phosphorus solubilizers.
Daniel Kaiser:I'm seeing more of those out there, you know, Pseudomonas, azospirillum bacillus are some of those that can solubilize. And what we're seeing in the market now with phosphorus, are just some phosphatase enzymes that are, you know, that are involved with solubilizing organic phosphorus. There's a number of products out there. I don't think they're gonna solve the issue with high phosphorus fertilizer prices. But, you know, there are some other things out there.
Daniel Kaiser:So, I mean, like I said, it's multifaceted for a lot of this stuff, and these companies are really looking at, trying to expand in these areas, you know, just because they tend to be roughly low cost to manufacture and without the regulation. I mean, they can get them out in the market really quick and, you know, start selling these products where if you're dealing with something like a nitrogen, like an inhibitor, it it takes a lot of testing and, you know, a lot of regulatory red tape to get those things in the market, costs a lot of money.
Daniel Kaiser:So these things are pretty easy, and that's why we see them increase as much as they are. There's some other things, too. I mean, there's, you know, plant growth regulators, volatile organic compounds, which, you know, can impact just can have stimulate growth and those types of things and and some iron transport chelators or some other some of these bacterias also can affect that.
Daniel Kaiser:So it's not just nitrogen, that we know these these beneficial bacteria can impact plants. I mean, it's a number of other uptake mechanisms. So, you know, again, there's a lot of gray area with a lot of these products in terms of what they actually do.
Brad Carlson:Well, in addition, some of those compounds actually are not dissimilar. There's been a school of people out there that still swear by applying sugar to the soil, is just simply supposed to energize and stimulate existing biologicals that are in the soil to give them food. You know, some of these products, so you talk about alcohols and ketones and so forth, you know, are intended to have that same kind of effect with some of the existing the micro flora and fauna. I think the thing we all got to realize is that what's going on in the soil is an ecosystem, and there's lots of different things, and what you're trying to do potentially in a lot of cases is get something out of balance compared to what else is there, and we can think about the ecosystem around us that when things get out of balance, it frequently doesn't stay that way or there's unintended consequences.
Brad Carlson:And so, you know, I think a lot of this stuff is is kind of headed in the the the soil health realm that if this stuff and I I know we all bristle at the word balance, but when it comes to microbes, there is such a thing because they will seek their own natural populations. What you want is is some of this stuff functioning in the soil.
Daniel Kaiser:Yeah. And sugars are an interesting one. That one will come up every once in a while. I kinda think of my, when my children were younger, you give them a lot of sugar and they, you know, get a lot of energy, but then have the the immediate crash after that. So, know, looking at, you know, some of these, very simple, you know, carbon compounds like sugars, I mean, yeah, it can stimulate things, but it isn't necessarily long lasting.
Daniel Kaiser:So you've gotta have essentially something that can sustain a lot of these things over time. So, you know, rhizobium, we've talked about that. You know, rhizobium are different category because, again, they exist in the plant. These are, we start talking about their symbiotic, it does come at a cost with a lot of these things. That's where a lot of these and we'll talk about these asymbiotics, where they there's a lot of claim that it doesn't cost the plant anything, which I don't really believe.
Daniel Kaiser:Because if we know with rhizobium that, you know, you just look at your soybean plant, the soybean plant provides a rhizobium with, you know, sugars or energy for the the rhizobium to to grow and survive within the the roots, then the rhizobium supply night atmospheric nitrogen to the soybean plant where it can really fix nitrogen, get everything it needs in a low end environment. And the thing about a lot of these these plants, it's particularly plants like soybeans that and alfalfa and these other legumes that rhizobium is something that's really important is that they're large net users of n.
Daniel Kaiser:I mean, the interesting one in in the state of Minnesota is, dry beans. The fact that, we do tend to supply some nitrogen for dry beans, that's just because the rhizobium don't tend to colonize early where there needs to be something applied to that. So, you know, looking at that, it's completely different in that.
Daniel Kaiser:Although, you know, looking at some of these these asymptomatic end fixers that, you know, I think there is there there generally is some cost to a plant for a lot of these things for for them to be able to survive. So, you know, we talk about symbiotic. It's involving interaction between two different organisms living in crows, physical association. With a symbiotic, it's kind of the other, essentially where they're, and we'll talk about this, where they're in close proximity, but they don't necessarily need each other to survive. So that's kind of the main thing that, you know, a lot of these microbial inoculants to corn, they're they're asymptomatic because we don't have nodulating corn.
Daniel Kaiser:I mean, that's been talked about since I was in college back in the late nineties. So we're we're still we're still sitting here waiting for a nitrogen fixing corn. So...
Brad Carlson:Well, and and one of the issues that there's always been with that is we know, for instance, if you supply nitrogen to soybeans, they'll just not nodulate. They'll use the nitrogen you give them because it's easier. And so the problem if we did have nodulating corn is it's either gonna have to supply the total amount of nitrogen necessary, or you're gonna have to still supplement it.
Brad Carlson:And if you supplement it, it's just gonna decrease the amount it nodulates, and it'll just keep decreasing as you increase the amount of nitrogen you apply till you're applying the full rate of nitrogen, and it's nodulating almost none. And in the end, you haven't really gained anything.
Brad Carlson:And so in some cases, you know, this concept really needs to reach a very late stage, and if it's going to play out in a commercial way, an environmental way out in the ecosystem.
Daniel Kaiser:So, I mean, I'll go back to this, you know, asymbiotic. Let's just give a definition of that. I mean, essentially, that's two organisms, a different species not living together in close or obligatory association. So, they're organisms that might benefit each other, but they don't necessarily need each other to survive. And it's usually, you know, if you look at a plant root, what's around the root is is your your crop, I mean, is it knows that there's some these organisms in the soil that would benefit it.
Daniel Kaiser:It's going to exude just some organic compounds, essentially, that provide food for a lot of organisms. So if you you look at, like, around the root zone, it'll be fairly microbial active because there'll be a lot of microbes there that'll be feeding off of what the plant is is releasing. And, you know, looking at that again, there likely is some cost to the plant to do it, but there's also a lot of benefit essentially with the plants at least getting something out of that. There's also what we call an endophyte, which essentially, if you look at a lot of the bacteria that are out there now for a lot of these, these free living end fixers or what we call endophytes, or those are they can actually live within the plant itself as an asymbiotic relationship. So, you know, we see some of these these products where they're meant to colonize inside the plant cells and actually work inside the plant cells and kinda feed off of byproducts of the plant, to provide atmospheric or nitrogen fixation to provide nitrogen to the plant.
Daniel Kaiser:So when you see that with the asymptomatic or the endophyte, that's kind of what they they're looking at right now is, again, trying to get stuff that's almost like a rhizobium, but it's it's not or there's not that direct relationship with one feeding the other. So if you look at these things, I mean, they've been around for a while. There's been evidence of asymptomatic and fixing organisms, in the fossil record as far back as one and a half billion years. There's some the oldest organisms found in the fossil record. If you look at the symbiotic ones, those came relatively, more recent about 59,000,000 years ago.
Daniel Kaiser:So, we've had the free living organisms around and it would make sense that they're gonna be around until they start figuring out how to have relationships with plants where they both can benefit from each other. So, things have been around for a long time. So, you know, again, they're there, we know they're there, it's just now we've got a better ability to be able to isolate what's there. So, you know, where the bacteria get their food? We've talked about this a little bit, you know, energy sources for the asymptomatic, you know, red exudates, you know, compounds.
Daniel Kaiser:I think one of the I think it's Nutricia or one of the the other products that's out there that's kind of an endophyte. It's it's supposed to utilize some compounds released by cells, inside the plants. So, you know, really, that's what they're kinda looking at with these things is, trying to mutually benefit both in in trying to then put something on that. In a lot of these things, you'll see something that might be isolated from sugarcane that's a really good nitrogen fixer that they're bringing into corn to try to get, some of that same benefit in the corn crop. And that's kinda the interesting thing is with some of this, you know, while a lot of this is you look at this biologicals, so for a lot of people who consider this organic, there's a fair amount of genetic engineering going on with with a lot of these these particular, these products.
Daniel Kaiser:So it's you know, looking at it, they just that's one of the things I think that's not talked about because a lot of people hear, you know, kinda out there and they you talk about what's going on with, our crops and some of the gene editing that they have a lot of issues with it. We're, you know, seeing a lot of these things come into the market as being natural, and there's a fair amount of that going on as well to try to get to boost these particular products, get them to work better.
Brad Carlson:Oh, that's not unusual. I mean, there's been a lot of that happened in the food industry. Know a lot of the cultures that produce cheese have been genetically modified, and I know that there's a lot of that that goes on in the pharmaceutical industry also. So it's actually probably a good thing that we're we're grabbing technology that's in wider use in the economy and and seeing what we can do with it in agriculture. You know?
Brad Carlson:The the the thing about a lot of this is it's pretty fascinating science, and it's real science. It's not, you know, the stuff you've been talking about, Dan, it's not made up. These things are real, and this is exactly what they do do. It's just unfortunate we haven't been able to see it play out better in the field as far as it actually increasing nutrient uptake, reducing nutrient loss, or or increasing yields or profitability. You know, the one thing I guess we've talked about a lot over the last several years is we're very careful not to overly criticize these products because the science is real.
Brad Carlson:And eventually, we hope that some of this stuff gets kind of ironed out so that it actually performs. We're just unfortunately, we're just not quite there yet as far as seeing consistent performance in the field.
Daniel Kaiser:So I guess to wrap it up, I mean, you know, you know, I think, Brad, you that those comments are some of the same comments that I would have is, you know, the fact that what we're seeing now isn't necessarily, you know, what we're seeing in what we see in the future. And kinda my my concern is the rush to get these things out and the fact that a lot of times they're selling these products to farmers at the point where they're still testing these things, and the farmers become kinda the test market for some of these things that they'll sour some of the opinions from growers in the long term on some of these these particular products because there might be something here in the future that, you know, does help us at least supply some of the nitrogen we need. I mean, the the thing about this, if you look at it, you know, fertilizer in, I mean, I I mentioned this before is that the nitrogen that the crop takes up, what we apply in fertilizers, really, you know, roughly the last 25 to 35% of, you know, the nitrogen that's needed to produce maximum yield.
Daniel Kaiser:So, you know, we're working in a a fairly narrow window, yet I don't think we're ever gonna be able to completely supplant the need for nitrogen fertilizer unless you can get nodulating corn or something like with, you know, rhizobia in make this work because many of the products right out there in the market now, you know, are reporting a benefit of, say, 30 pounds of n being supplied to the plant. And I mean, I think a lot of that, their their benefits really are just simply the fact that, you know, coming from a lot of growers that might be over applying by about 30 pounds and that they're using these products and getting the same yield, it's kind of a challenge. And we talked to think about some of that before in the previous podcast, you know, Carl Rosen and I, about how to test these things because that's I think mainly the challenge is consistency, and that's the thing I kinda worry about these is, you know, we're talking about, you know, say something that supplies twenty, thirty pounds of N. I mean, I it's kinda hard to guarantee that because of being the microbial in nature.
Daniel Kaiser:This isn't like fertilizer where I buy a, you know, ton of urea, I know how much what the percentage of nitrogen is, I know how much n is there. You know, these things are their their promise of of, you know, potentially doing it, but it's really just the potential. It's not not a guarantee. So, you know you know, again, really looking at this, you know, say at the end of my career here when I eventually retire, I mean, will we see some products that work better? Maybe.
Daniel Kaiser:Right now, I just think there's a lot of inconsistencies, and they're just since there was really a lot of interest in the market that we saw about everybody coming out with their own particular product that really wasn't completely flushed out, and it'd be nice where we had some regulation where these things could be researched a little bit more, where, you know, the final or the, least the product that's being sold has been looked at instead of, you know, where I have issues when I'm testing stuff, where I can say in a five year pro project with some of these companies, I can have five different versions of a product over those five years as things are being developed. But, you know, everybody's really looking for that that magic, concoction that they can increase nutrient availability, and we're just not really there right now. So, I mean, I guess I'll kinda it with that. It's, there's some interesting things there. I'm you know, I I don't like to be completely pessimistic on these things or sound like I'm pessimistic on these things.
Daniel Kaiser:It's just where I see issues is the the fact that, you know, the marketing of these things kind of trumps or, you know, gets, you know, ahead of the science where we just don't have a lot of that information we need to, you know, tell where these things might work. Because there might be specific circumstances these things will work better. Many times when they test these things, they're done in sand culture where you have no microorganisms or very little bit little microbiome, which these things would work better at that point. There's nothing competing against them, but it's just biological process, and it gets really, you know, kinda hard to know what's gonna happen once these things are applied to the soil.
Brad Carlson:And it's unfortunate. We we all have friends in industry. We're aware of the large sums of money that have been invested into developing these products. And, you know, with we're certainly not going to throw anybody under the bus here, but, you know, we've had, you know, folks tell us that, well, our parent company is telling us we need to go market product x because we've got so much money invested. Either we start returning something on our investment or we're gonna pull the plug on it.
Brad Carlson:You know? And some of this stuff hasn't been ready for prime time when it's gone out there. Unfortunately, maybe maybe a lot of cases, it's not going to be ready for prime time for a long time. You know, we've seen evidence like with what happened with the the crop models and the nitrogen advisory tools where a lot of venture capital went into that stuff, and it seemed that in those cases, it actually worked, yet they pulled the money back because it wasn't returning the kind of profit they wanted or wasn't returning the profit fast enough. And so I kinda worry some of this stuff, you know, maybe on the right track, and it could have the rug pulled out from under it before it ever quite gets that far.
Brad Carlson:I think I think the potential is huge. Going back to one of our previous Nitrogen Smart podcasts, you know, there's roughly about a thousand pounds of nitrogen per acre for every percent organic matter. So most of our Southern Minnesota soils have three to 4,000 pounds of nitrogen per acre locked up in the soil organic matter. You know, the amount that gets released on an annual basis is significant. You as you'd mentioned, Dan, it's supplying roughly half to three fourths of the amount of nitrogen necessary for our crop production, the question kind of becomes, can we get it to go fast enough, you know, to supply a higher percent or to supply all of it?
Brad Carlson:You know, that comes with some some problems because we also know that a large portion of the nitrogen we're losing into water is accumulating after the growing season. So if you stimulate higher mineralization rates, that won't shut off when the crop is done. We can actually see the water quality get worse because we're mineralizing more nitrogen in September when the crop's done growing, you know, so so we gotta be very careful about that stuff. I think, you know, from from me not being a biologist, you know, but but being a soil physicist and working in nutrient management. When we look at some of the data from the research plots at Waseca, there was a treatment that was done for many years where they kept the soil bare.
Brad Carlson:They were going through it with a rototiller. And the annual losses of nitrogen on those bare plots were about 40 pounds an acre. Now we know that we lose about 20 pounds an acre where we apply zero nitrogen. So that really means only about 20 pounds of extra nitrogen is being mineralized in those soils. You know, well, maybe we're losing a lot more in the atmosphere through denitrification.
Brad Carlson:I don't know. But there's but it's clear that if we're growing 160 to 180 bushel corn out there with no nitrogen, and then we're supplying nitrogen to bump it up to two thirty to two fifty, okay, you know, the the clearly, the soil is supplying, you know, 90 to a 120 pounds of nitrogen on an annual basis to the growing crop. Well, if we're only losing 20 when there's no crop out there, something is switching that process on and off. K? Something's driving that to mineralize more nitrogen when there's less available in the soil when the crops picking up.
Brad Carlson:So there's something out there that's yet to be discovered that is going to control a lot of this, you know, the mineralization process. I think the key, though, is, you know, can we get that harnessed and can we turn it off? Because like I said, if it continues to mineralize a lot of nitrogen in September after the crop's done growing, we're actually gonna make our water quality problems. So it's a lot to think about.
Daniel Kaiser:Well, if you mineralize more too, we'll let over time, you know, decrease your soil organic pool too. So that's
Brad Carlson:It will.
Daniel Kaiser:That's a good question. I mean, it's there there's just a lot of things here. Like I said, it's it's I think there's some promise here, but, but the main thing is, you know, it's it's kinda you gotta learn to walk before you run, and it seems like we've kinda taken off on this really quick. And, again, I think it's it's sour. It'll it'll sour some people's attitudes towards these things should help in the future.
Daniel Kaiser:And, you know, a lot of it too, I think, is if you look at a lot of growers with the high yields they're getting and they continue to see yields increase, a lot of them don't think, you know, that you can't understand that why the nitrogen rates don't increase with that increase in yield. And you see there's a lot of with the breeding right now, a lot of efficiency or when we start talking about these these hybrids that's really gone along, I think, more a long way, really, is if we see that helping us get these higher yields, you know, it's been expensive grain protein that's went down because these plants are not, putting as much in the grain. But, but these things, like I said, it's it we'll see. And the the sinking is one of the things that I've always wondered about with it, you know, you know, looking at especially if it's something that's free liver in the soil that's not in the plant itself, it's just supplying or fixing nitrogen. If the plant doesn't take it up, will it supply more?
Daniel Kaiser:I mean, I I there's a lot of questions here with this, and, we'll just kinda see how it goes. And I guess before we go here, I just do wanna throw out that website. If anybody is interested, it's ncera103.0rg and there are several a lot of them are research reports, so you don't need to be a PhD to look at a lot of that information. You just need to kinda know what is in a product if you're gonna look and try to find information on it because, you know, things tend to reinvent themselves. You might be something that's tested twenty, thirty years ago that has the active ingredients the same as something now that just tends to kinda cycle back through onto the market.
Daniel Kaiser:So that's the thing I'll throw out there is just you you kinda need to know what's in it, before you start looking at that. So that's a good source if you're you're wondering about research on some of these things.
Jack Wilcox:Daniel Kaiser, Extension nutrient management specialist, and Brad Carlson, Extension Educator. Thanks a lot for talking with us today.
Brad Carlson:Thanks, Jack.
Daniel Kaiser:Thanks.
Jack Wilcox:Do you have a question about something on your farm? Just send us an email here at nutmgmt@umn.edu. Thanks a lot for listening and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Jack Wilcox:Advancing Nitrogen Smart is proud to be supported by the farm families of Minnesota and their corn checkoff investment through Minnesota Corn.
