Corn Fertilizer Use Efficiency Trials We have all heard that world phosphate reserves are depleting and that we need to become more efficient with phosphorus fertilizer. This trial was designed to see if we could effectively and efficiently reduce fertilizer inputs and maintain profitability. Working with Nutrien we chose products that we felt could improve nutrient use efficiency and help us reduce fertilizer inputs. It was our goal to maintain profitability while improving nutrient use efficiency. Therefore, for this trial we utilized the grower standard practice (GSP) or normal Orthman research farm practice as a check, then added the products to that GSP as another check, then we reduced the GSP for strip-till by ten percent and fifteen percent and added the efficiency products. Observations were made throughout the growing season and harvest data was collected by weight of 8 rows wide and 1,243 feet long. The goal with having large scale plots is to help us produce more reliable data with field variability included in that data set. Figure 15 shows the nutrients that were reduced and replaced with the additives for this trial. It is important to recognize that we did not replace as much nutrient as we reduced other than the small amount of K 2 O and we are placing more Zn into the system than we are removing. In regards to N and P we are replacing 12-22% of the N we are removing and 28-41% of the P removed from the strip-till operation. If you think about corn using 0.36 lbs of P2O5 per bushel we are removing 18 to 33 bushels worth of phosphorus from the system, therefore yields similar to the check would be an efficiency victory.
Nutrient reduction
K 2 O 0.07 0.10
S
Zn
N
P 2 O 5 11.09 16.64
10 percent 15 percent
8.31
2.93 4.40
0.11 0.17
12.47
Nutrient added
N
P 2 O 5
K 2 O
S
Zn
2 Qt/ac Extract + 2qt/ac Blackmax22 + 2 gal/acAltura 1 qt/ac Terramar + 2 qt/ac Blackmax22 + 2 gal/ac Altura
1.82
4.58
0.20
0.63
0.44
1.53
4.58
0.20
0.00
0.44
Figure 15 Nutrient reduction and addition for efficiency trials.
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