Syngenta Canada says its Envita Dry uses the naturally occurring bacterium Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus to enable plants to draw nitrogen directly from the air. The bacteria fix nitrogen inside plant cells, giving crops a steady, season-long nutrient source beyond what’s available in soil.

“Envita Dry gives plants the ability to source additional nitrogen from the atmosphere and deliver it to the right place and at the right time when the plant needs it,” said Gustavo G. Roelants, biologicals marketing lead for Syngenta Canada. “It supports nutrient-use efficiency by fixing nitrogen inside the plant’s leaves for a steady nutrient supply.”

Syngenta, which added the liquid form of Envita to its biologicals line in 2022, says the new dry formulation offers a two-year shelf life, a low use rate and a broad application window. Each 200-gram pouch treats 40 acres and can be added directly to tank water without pre-mixing.

The company recommends using Envita Dry alongside existing fertilizer programs and applying it with a non-ionic surfactant, or tank-mixing it with compatible fungicides and herbicides.

Field-tested in Canada, Envita Dry is registered for use on potatoes, canola, cereals, corn, pulses, soybeans and forage crops. It’s covered by a performance guarantee and designed to give farmers a simple, shelf-stable option for adding biological nitrogen fixation to their fertility plans, the company says.

More information and a list of tested tank-mix partners are available online.

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In a recent presentation he made at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon, Bryce Geisel, a senior agronomist with Koch Agronomic Services, tackled the issue, digging down into these loss pathways and how applying the right practices can keep nitrogen where it belongs.

“When you put it out on your field, nitrogen is eventually going to make its way into the soil. That’s where we want it to be,” Geisel says, adding that from that point, the nitrogen would either be taken up by the plant or it would be lost to various mechanisms at play. Those loss mechanisms include volatilization, denitrification and leaching.

Volatilization

Volatilization occurs when urea, an inaccessible form of nitrogen for plants, is converted into ammonia and evaporates into the atmosphere. For this conversion to happen, Geisel explains, three factors are needed: urea application, water for hydrolysis, and the urease enzyme, which breaks down urea.

“The urease enzyme is broken down from residues in the crop or microbes in the soil,” he explains. “It’s pretty much everywhere, so we know we are going to have urease enzyme in your soil.”

Ammonia volatilization is most common at the soil surface and can be reduced by incorporating urea into the soil or relying on rainfall to wash it down. Factors such as soil moisture, pH, temperature, soil type and the presence of crop residue influence the extent of volatilization. For instance, high pH and lighter soils increase volatilization risk, while warmer temperatures speed up the conversion.

Leaching

Leaching happens when nitrate moves down through the soil with water, beyond the root zone. Sandy soils are especially prone to leaching after heavy rain or irrigation. This can cause nitrogen loss, particularly in fields with tile drainage. To reduce leaching, it’s important to delay the conversion of ammonium to nitrate, which allows more nitrogen to remain in forms accessible to plants before water carries it away.

“Leaching is just kind of that movement of nitrate down through the soil and out of the growing zone, the root zone of your crop,” Geisel explains. “And denitrification is going the other way.”

Denitrification

When soils are waterlogged, and oxygen becomes scarce, denitrification occurs. In these conditions, certain bacteria begin using nitrate — the nitrogen from fertilizers — instead of oxygen. As a result, some of the nitrate is broken down and lost to the atmosphere, meaning it’s no longer available for crops. This process is most likely to happen when the soil is about 60 per cent saturated, which is wet enough to limit oxygen. For farmers, this means if fields remain too wet for too long, nitrogen losses can occur, reducing the effectiveness of fertilizer and potentially affecting crop yields.

“We want to delay that nitrogen becoming nitrate as long as possible,” Geisel says. “The longer we can delay, the more likely nitrate will get to the crop.”

READ MORE: Nitrogen, nitrates and nitrites

Limit losses with 4Rs

Geisel emphasizes that the 4Rs — right rate, right time, right place and right source — are key to reducing nitrogen losses. By focusing on these strategies, farmers can boost nitrogen efficiency, minimize waste and improve their bottom line.

Experiment with rate

Every field has a point where adding more nitrogen stops increasing yield and starts to waste resources. Finding the right rate can be a challenge. It involves balancing the crop’s needs with the risk of over-application. Geisel advises farmers to review and adjust nitrogen rates frequently.

“Everyone has a number for their fields they like to use,” Geisel notes. “It’s good to have that, but it’s also good to do a little check on how they’re doing every year.”

By testing variations, such as slightly higher or lower rates, farmers can determine if they’re using too much nitrogen or if they could push the rate for better efficiency. But Geisel advises farmers to make sure the changes implemented would be noticeable.

“I’d recommend at least a 20 per cent differential from what you were doing,” he says. “If you get into that five to 10 per cent difference on your nitrogen rate, there’s a good chance you aren’t going to pick that up within the field.”

Experiment with timing

Finding the optimal timing for nitrogen application is a complex task, largely due to the unpredictable nature of weather and varying crop needs.

Geisel points out that grass crops such as wheat, barley, corn and oats require a steady supply of nitrogen throughout their growth stages. He also lumped potatoes in with that group, because they tend to need nitrogen later in the season.

Canola, though, requires nitrogen much earlier in its life cycle, which adds another layer of complexity and makes it trickier to experiment with, he says.

“But one thing that is consistent with all the crops was that the small seedlings were not taking up a lot of nitrogen.”

This creates a risk for nitrogen to be sitting unused on the soil, where it becomes vulnerable to losses — but it also creates an opportunity, allowing for adjustments so the crop can access the nitrogen once the plants begin their rapid growing phase, and nitrogen losses are less of a concern.

Geisel stresses the importance of carefully managing application timing, suggesting farmers experiment with different strategies, such as split applications, to better align nitrogen availability with crop needs. However, he acknowledges, the daily grind of the growing season also poses challenges.

“The efficiency of your operation is going to come into play, as well,” he says. “Once the field season gets going, trying to do multiple applications across the field becomes very difficult, logistically.”

Experiment with placement

Nitrogen placement offers more control than either timing or rate, with various application methods available to optimize efficiency and minimize losses.

One of the most commonly used placements is spring broadcast urea, which allows farmers to cover large areas quickly. However, Geisel points out, this placement comes with a significant risk of volatilization, especially if the nitrogen was not incorporated into the soil soon after application. The risk is particularly high when rainfall was insufficient. Ideally, a half inch or more of rain is needed to push the nitrogen into the soil and reduce volatilization losses. Without enough rain, volatilization can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the applied nitrogen, Geisel notes.

Shallow banding, a technique where nitrogen is placed just below the soil surface — typically up to two inches deep — offers a more controlled approach. This method has become popular for urea because many seeders were designed to handle side- or mid-row banding. While shallow banding reduces volatilization compared to surface broadcasting, it still carries risks, such as losses from denitrification and, to a lesser degree, volatilization, depending on soil conditions and weather.

Deep banding, where nitrogen is placed three inches into the soil, is considered the best method for minimizing nitrogen loss. This method substantially reduces volatilization and denitrification risks by keeping nitrogen at a depth where it’s less vulnerable to environmental factors.

“When we got that nitrogen down three inches into the soil, there is very little that’s going to be lost from denitrification or volatilization, but leaching is still a risk,” Geisel says.

However, deep banding can be costly and often slower, which can make it less attractive for some farmers.

Geisel also touched on the role of soil pH in nitrogen placement. Higher pH levels reduce the risk of ammonium volatilization, which occurs when nitrogen is left exposed at the soil surface.

He cautioned that pH typically increases when urea is placed in the soil, so farmers have to be aware of that dynamic as well. If the nitrogen is placed too shallowly or is not properly incorporated, the pH spike could lead to higher volatilization rates, undermining the effectiveness of the fertilizer.

Experiment with source

Geisel underscores the importance of choosing the right nitrogen source in minimizing nitrogen losses.

“Source is definitely something that gets a lot of focus in terms of nitrogen management,” he says. “We can start to play around with it and start making them more effective just by choosing a different source.”

But rather than focus on all of the different fertilizer sources, Geisel zeroes in on the nitrogen sources that have been developed specifically to reduce nitrogen losses.

Polymer-coated urea falls into that category. It consists of urea granules coated in a polymer that delays the release of nitrogen, ensuring it’s available during critical growth stages.

“It is activated by moisture, temperature, and time,” Geisel explains.

While this product reduces volatilization risk, crops still face the risk of loss from denitrification and leaching, especially if it’s applied near the surface. Geisel advises moving it deeper into the soil to mitigate these risks.

Geisel also discussed enhanced-efficiency nitrogen (EEN) products, which include both single and dual inhibitors. Single inhibitors include urease and nitrification inhibitors.

Urease inhibitors block the enzyme responsible for converting urea into ammonia.

“We want to make sure we put enough of that product down, or it’s not going to have an impact on that bacteria,” he said.

Urease inhibitors, such as NBPT, help keep urea stable longer, reducing nitrogen losses. Higher concentrations of the inhibitor lead to more effective protection and give crops more time to access the nitrogen.

Nitrification inhibitors, such as DCD (dicyandiamide), delay the conversion of ammonium into nitrate, keeping more nitrogen in its stable, ammonium form.

“What we were trying to do here is basically just run interference,” Geisel says.

These inhibitors help ensure nitrogen remains available for crops by delaying nitrification until the plants can use it.

Dual inhibitors combine the benefits of both urease and nitrification inhibitors, offering more protection against all loss mechanisms, especially in high-risk scenarios like fall applications.

“A lot of this has to be a balance between the economics, the efficiencies, and the losses that you are looking at,” Geisel says.

To a great extent, using 4R techniques to make nitrogen efficiency adjustments require an element of trial and error. Geisel stresses that the 4Rs don’t have to be treated in isolation.

“We can incorporate a source with a timing, with a rate; they’re all tied together,” he says. “That is the big takeaway.”

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If he doesn’t know the answer, the North Dakota State University soil scientist will admit it; if he does, he’ll tell you.

As an example, in the summer of 2022 researchers from land grant universities across the north-central U.S. studied commercially available, biological nitrogen-fixing products to see if they increase crop yields.

The results were collected, analyzed and the scientists published a paper in 2023.

Franzen, the lead author, said the products rarely worked.

“There was a very low frequency of what a farmer would call success,” he told growers, agronomists and industry reps in February at the CropConnect conference in Winnipeg.

The agricultural market for bacteria that can fix nitrogen and possibly deliver it to a plant is an emerging part of crop production.

Many companies, including global firms, are promoting their biologicals as products that can boost crop yield or allow a producer to cut fertilizer rates.

Many growers are curious about these products, especially in years when fertilizer prices are high.

Franzen’s paper reported only two cases where the biological products had an impact on yield.

“Sixty-one site years of N rate trials with and without the use of biological N fixing products were conducted in corn, spring wheat, sugar beet and canola in 10 states,” the report says. “(Only) two site-years in corn had yield increases due to product use over the N rates alone. Given the low rate of positive benefits … growers should be skeptical of products that claim to provide non-symbiotic N-fixation for the purpose of allowing a farmer to decrease fertilizer N rate.”

A success rate of two out of 61 is not great.

However, Franzen remains open to the idea that these products can work.

“It’s not zero anything in the jug. These things are natural.”

Following the publication of the NDSU report, six companies in the biological sector contacted Franzen to discuss his findings.

They acknowledged the challenges of getting biologicals to perform in real-world conditions.

One of the main issues is shipping.

It’s difficult to transport the products by plane, train or truck from a manufacturing plant to a farm because some bacteria can be highly sensitive to temperature. For instance, one product is supposed to be stored at 4 to 8 C, Franzen said.

“These things have to be alive to work. That’s the question: what does your supply chain look like? How are you going to keep them alive?”

Another challenge is that thousands or millions of microbes already exist in the soil.

A farmer could add a population of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but there’s no guarantee of survival.

“If you try to put something in there that is foreign, (the other organisms) are going to try and kill it,” Franzen said. “If it’s not competitive, it will lose.”

Yet another obstacle is that these bacteria don’t live in synergy with the plant — they’re not symbiotic.

“Because they’re not attached to the plant, they’ll never supply all the nitrogen of the plant,” he said.

“They’re going to be limited by the limited supply of food outside of that root.”

Despite the limitations, growers may still be curious about these products and whether they can perform on their farm.

The only way to get that answer is replicated research on the farm, Franzen said.

He clarified that dividing a field in two and using a biological in one half of a field is not a replicated trial.

Farmers need to follow the proper protocols to get a useful result.

Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers operates an on-farm network that conducts trials across the province. It looked at a range of biological products from 2019-23.

“So far, we’ve tested 12 products over 28 trials in three different crops,” Laura Schmidt, a production specialist with MPSG, said at CropConnect.

Most of the trials were for soybeans, but they also tested the nitrogen-fixing biologicals on peas and dry beans. The results were extremely consistent.

“So far, we’ve not seen a yield increase with any of these products that we’ve tested,” Schmidt said, adding she’s 99 per cent confident in the results.

“I’m leaving that one per cent of the time where we might find this biological product that’s actually going to perform. That is something we would like to find.”

Franzen is also hopeful that the nitrogen-fixing, non-symbiotic products can work.

The evidence isn’t there, as of February 2024, but growers and the crop nutrition industry should be patient.

“We’re always short-sighted about this stuff. This is what we see, right now,” he said.

“But 10 years down the road, when all of this is worked out, if the investors are patient enough … to try and make sure it’s put out there in a manner that would be really beneficial and consistently beneficial to farmers, then you’ll see these kind of things (perform).”

ALSO: Biological certification program planned

Glacier FarmMedia — There are dozens of choices in the vitamin and supplement aisles at grocery and drug stores, to the point where consumers can be overwhelmed by the options.

What is ginkgo biloba and what does it do? Is it better than beta carotene?

The world of biological products in agriculture is similar. With hundreds on the market, growers may not understand how Product A is different from Product K.

The people who provide advice to growers may also struggle to know the difference, so Corteva AgriScience is stepping forward to fill the void.

“I can’t speak for everybody, but I can tell you that Corteva is launching a biological certification system for 2025 and beyond,” said Ryan Bonnett, Canadian commercial lead for biologicals at Corteva. “We want to bring people in and educate them on these products.”

The training will be directed at agronomists and retail representatives who are face to face with growers.

Most agronomists understand the details of fungicides, fertilizer and other cropping decisions, but for many, biologicals remain a black box.

“How do these things work the best? Where do I use them? What do they actually do? What’s the difference between this product and this product?” Bonnett said, listing some of the basic questions.

A certification program won’t answer every query, but more knowledge should shed some light.

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He’s got more than one variety growing — a grazing-oriented option and the typical silage corn — but the real experiment is happening beneath the canopy. This year, the corn shared space with forage soybean and hairy vetch.

The beans were “very impressive,” he said during a late-January tour to his farm south of Brandon, Man. “In the best spots of this field, where there was 10-foot-tall corn, the beans were probably chest height.”

The idea of adding legumes to intercrops for soil health purposes is well established. The hope is that the field will benefit from added nitrogen fixation, along with the purported other benefits of intercropping, such as erosion prevention, green cover and weed suppression.

From a feed standpoint, both soybeans and vetch are high in protein, offsetting the typical weakness in corn, which is famously high in energy but requires supplementation when fed.

In recent years research stations have explored intercropping in terms of corn grazing and improved soil health, and to gauge whether the practice could reduce time and cost associated with supplemental hay.

How it started

Forage soybeans are new to intercropping species lists in Manitoba.

The idea of a long-growing species, which would stay vegetative in a northern climate, was interesting to Joe Gardiner, co-founder of forage seed provider Covers and Co. The variety he chose, sourced out of South Carolina, was marketed for grazing and as a tool to improve soil health.

The ensuing trials showed promise. With soybeans added, Gardiner reported 40-50 pounds an acre of residual nitrogen in 30-inch corn rows. His own experiments on 60-inch rows showed even more, although the company’s current recommendation is to stick to narrower spacing to preserve biomass yield.

Forage soybeans were later integrated into plots at the Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization. The southwestern Manitoba research station, known for its intercrop innovation, had turned its attentions to forage corn mixes.

Forage soybeans joined tillage radish, Italian rye grass, crimson clover and hairy vetch in the lineup of corn companion crops. They were a stand-out success.

The species has also been put to work on Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives, an applied research farm north of Brandon, said Covers and Co. sales manager Owen Taylor.

“We recommend sowing at 20 pounds per acre, either day before, day after or the same day as the corn planter,” he said. “Most producers will just solid-seed the soybeans, a lot of them, when they put the fertilizer down. Some producers were able to bump the planter over and sow directly between the rows.”

Producers fertilize the corn at regular rates, he added.

The company also urges producers to seed rows north-south to maximize sunlight between the rows.

Corn grazing is untested ground. The company typically sees the mix put to silage, Taylor said, with cows turned out afterward to graze the residue in fall or early winter.

“Probably 60 to 70 per cent of the plant actually ends up in the pile and we’re seeing an increase of 1.5 to two per cent in protein on a feed test. And then what’s left of the beans, guys are grazing it after.”

Producers who corn graze can expect the same soil health, nutrition and water infiltration benefits of intercropping for silage, Taylor said, but it’s unknown how snow load and leaf drop will affect feed quality.

How it’s going

McRae opted for 30-inch corn rows, but backed off the population. His stand was targeted at 24,000 plants per acre, down from the 30,000 he’s done for regular corn grazing.

The soybeans were seeded the day after the corn at the rate recommended by Covers and Co. Hairy vetch was seeded at five pounds an acre.

“I’ve liked it so far,” McRae said of the soybeans. “The beans, I think, are adding a little bit of protein and other minerals to it.”

That’s hard to quantify, he admitted. Feed tests prior to turn out showed an increase in protein and the beans climbed high enough to clear the snowpack, but he doesn’t have a split field set up to directly compare a pure corn system to the intercrop.

“I haven’t really sat there all day and watched them graze through it, but judging by what’s left when they leave the field, they’re eating enough of it that I think they’re getting some benefit,” he said.

Between hairy vetch and soybeans, however, the soybeans are winning. Both the corn and soybeans are glyphosate-tolerant, making weed management easy, McRae noted. The vetch was stunted by the herbicide.

“I think that’s a little bit year-to-year dependent,” he said. “I was hoping the vetch would vine its way up the corn so we would be able to access it this time of year in the winter.”

There are few good herbicide options for a corn intercrop, other than glyphosate.

“It’s just so hard to put another species into it because all of the corn herbicide is meant to kill everything except corn,” McRae said, adding that there is also the challenge of herbicide residue.

He has had a good winter for the experiment so far, Taylor noted. Snowpack has been light, reducing hurdles for soybean uptake.

Covers and Co. does not have different recommendations for corn intercrop grazing versus intercropping for silage, he said.

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A recent western Canadian study could make that task a little easier in the not-too-distant future. The Resilient Rotations project is a comprehensive, five-year study that evaluated various cropping rotations. The project’s aim is to create more productive, sustainable and resilient cropping rotations on the Canadian Prairies.

The project was managed by the Western Grains Research Foundation’s Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster, with research conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and several universities and industry partners at seven field sites in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Nitrogen use efficiency was one of four key areas studied, the first phase of which wrapped up earlier this year.

Sheri Strydhorst, a former agronomy research scientist, who served as an extension specialist with the project, says high input costs and the political climate were the main reasons nitrogen use efficiency was a primary focus of the study.

“Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the most expensive input costs that farmers incur and a key determinant in grain yield. There’s also significant political interest in nitrogen fertilizer rates and the use of responsible practices such as 4R nitrogen stewardship,” she says.

“This whole nitrogen use efficiency is really key for sustainability from the productivity, the economic and environmental perspective.”

Nitrogen use efficiency

As part of the study, nitrogen use efficiency was calculated as a ratio of grain yield divided by the amount of available nitrogen in the form of soil mineral nitrogen as well as applied nitrogen fertilizer.

In a case where 30 bushels of a crop were produced with 90 pounds of available nitrogen, the nitrogen use efficiency rate would be 0.333. A canola equivalent yield was used to make the different cropping systems comparable, says Kui Liu, a research scientist based out of AAFC’s research and development centre in Swift Current, Sask., who headed the project.

Six rotation types were tested in three different regions to determine their economic viability: the northern and southern Prairies in Alberta and Saskatchewan (2018 to 2021) and Manitoba’s Red River Valley (2019 to 2022). The six rotation types were categorized as control, intensified, diversified, market driven, high risk and soil health.

Strydhorst says fertilizer rates were selected based on results of soil tests conducted to determine the amount of available nitrogen in the soil at seven test sites. The amounts varied based on the rotation and crop type.

In a case where 155 pounds of nitrogen were required and there were 70 pounds of available nitrogen in the soil, that meant 85 pounds were applied in the form of mineral nitrogen fertilizer.

Liu says soil testing was conducted to a depth of 60 centimetres rather than the 15 cm used on most farms. That helped provide a more precise measurement of nitrogen in the soil at the depth most plant roots will reach. Testing was conducted the previous fall when soil had cooled because there wasn’t enough time to do it in the spring.

The exception to applied fertilizer rates was in the case of the market-driven rotations, in which 1.2 times the recommended rate of fertilizer was used. Strydhorst says this reflected that farmers sometimes try to achieve maximum yield potential even though there may be higher associated costs.

Northern Prairies

The control rotation at the two Alberta locations in Beaverlodge and Lacombe included wheat, pea, wheat and canola, while the intensified system was comprised of wheat, canola, wheat and canola. The diversified rotation was pea, winter wheat, faba bean and canola.

A market-driven rotation consisted of canola, malt barley, canola and canola, while the high-risk rotation featured flax, soybean, durum and canola. A soil health rotation was comprised of forage pea for green manure, winter wheat, faba bean and canola.

At the two Saskatchewan test sites in Melfort and Scott, the control rotation included canola, wheat, pea and wheat, while the intensified rotation featured canola, wheat, canola and wheat. A diversified rotation featured pea, winter wheat, faba bean and canola and a market-driven rotation was comprised of oat, canola, wheat and canola in Melfort and canola, canola, green pea and canola in Scott.

The high-risk rotation at the two Saskatchewan sites included flax, soybean, durum and canola and the soil health rotation featured forage pea for green manure, winter wheat, faba bean and canola.

The diversified rotations in the northern Prairies consistently had some of the highest nitrogen use efficiencies in the region. Strydhorst attributes that to the presence of pulse crops and winter wheat in those rotations.

“It definitely wasn’t a surprise,” she says.

“If we look at the diversified rotations at the Alberta sites, it was pea, winter wheat, faba bean and canola. Of those four crops, pea and faba bean are nitrogen fixing crops and the winter wheat is taking up late fall nitrogen in the system.

“On those pulse crop years when you have the pea and faba bean, no mineral nitrogen fertilizer needs to be added.”

Another factor in the success of the diversified rotations in the northern Prairies, according to Liu, is that the chosen crops spur soil microbe activity, which in turn releases more nitrogen from the soil.

The soil health rotations in Alberta and Saskatchewan all had relatively low nitrogen efficiency rates. Strydhorst says that was largely because they produced harvestable yields in only three of four years with no harvestable product produced during the forage pea/green manure year.

“You’re producing nitrogen for the system but you’re not producing a harvestable product. The nitrogen (production) doesn’t offset the loss of the harvested grain.”

Results at the two Saskatchewan test sites were markedly different, with those in Melfort far less positive than in Scott. Liu says that was because seeding at that site in 2020 occurred about a month later than at the other sites because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and yields there were only 60 or 70 per cent of normal.

Strydhorst says results in the northern Prairie region highlight the important role pulse crops play in a rotation.

“It just highlights that pulse crops contribute so much to nitrogen use efficiency in the system. To have more verifiable documentation of that (is important). Pulse crops can be a headache to grow so here’s one more piece of supporting evidence to show the benefits of those in the system.”

Southern Prairies

The southern Prairies region included test sites in Lethbridge, Alta., and Swift Current, Sask.

The four-year control rotation used there consisted of fallow, followed by durum, malt barley and finally durum. The intensified rotation consisted of lentil, durum, chickpea and durum, while the diversified rotation was comprised of lentil, canola, pea and durum.

The market-driven and high-risk rotations varied slightly between the two sites. The market-driven rotation in Swift Current included flax, wheat, lentil and feed barley while its counterpart in Lethbridge contained canola, wheat, wheat and malt barley. The high-risk rotation featured soybean, canary seed, faba bean and durum in Swift Current with corn substituted for canary seed in Lethbridge. The soil health rotation included forage pea for green manure, barley and pea as an intercrop, another intercrop of faba bean and barley and durum.

The intensified and diversified rotations in the southern Prairies had the highest nitrogen use efficiency in the region. Strydhorst says those performances can again be largely attributed to the presence of pulse crops.

“When you look at those rotations, they have the lentil and the chickpea or the lentil or the pea, so a pulse crop two out of the four years,” she says.

“That means not having to add a mineral nitrogen fertilizer in 50 per cent of the years of that rotation. That, automatically, and coupled with yields, gives you that improved nitrogen use efficiency in those two treatments.”

As was the case in the northern Prairies, the soil health rotation in this region did not have a high nitrogen use efficiency because of its low yield and the fact it produced a harvestable product in only three of four years.

Strydhorst says an encouraging sign in the southern Prairies is that many farmers in the region regularly incorporate pulse crops in their rotations.

“Farmers often have that pulse crop, durum, pulse crop, durum rotation, which has that high nitrogen use efficiency. That’s a very common practice. This is just kind of a verification of that activity which they are already doing, which is nice to see,” she adds.

Red River Valley

The Red River Valley test site, near the town of Carman, Man., tested a control rotation of wheat, soybean, wheat and canola and an intensified rotation of soybean, wheat, soybean and canola. In addition, a diversified rotation featured canola, winter wheat, soybean and canola, while a market-driven rotation was comprised of corn, corn, oat and canola.

A high-risk rotation included corn, dry bean, canola and sunflower, while a soil health rotation featured green manure, fall rye, corn-soybean and canola-pea intercrops.

Unlike the two other regions, where the diversified and market-driven rotations were clear winners, the high-risk rotation had the highest nitrogen use efficiency in the Red River Valley. Strydhorst says that can be chalked up to high corn and sunflower yields in the rotation for two of the four years.

“I think it really highlights that high nitrogen use efficiency is coupled with high grain yields. On the flip side, low nitrogen use efficiency is often coupled with low grain yields.”

Surprisingly, the diversified rotation in the Red River Valley didn’t perform well in terms of its nitrogen use efficiency. Liu says that was mostly attributable to an infestation of flea beetles in one of the years canola was grown, which significantly lowered the yield.

As was the case in the other two regions, the soil health rotation did not have a high nitrogen use efficiency in the Red River Valley.

Strydhorst says the take-home message from the Carman results is “high yields equal high nitrogen use efficiency and low yield equals low nitrogen use efficiency.”

Moving forward

Liu and his team are waiting for word on additional funding to continue a second, five-year phase of the study. He says further study is needed to provide a more precise picture of the effects different rotations can have on crop productivity, sustainability and resilience.

“In this crop system study, the first cycle of rotations is a transition period. It’s more affected by your historical cropping system rather than your testing cropping system,” he says.

“During this transition period, we really cannot assess the rotation effect fairly, so we want to extend this study for another crop rotation cycle. That way we can assess the true rotation effects so we can optimize the cropping system.

“The second reason is some variables such as your soil health cannot be assessed over a short period of time. You need a longer term. It’s the same thing with resilience. We need more environmental scenarios to assess the cropping system response to stress and then to assess the resiliency of that cropping system.”

Liu says most of the parameters in the proposed second phase of the study would remain the same, but researchers would also like to gather actual greenhouse gas emissions generated in the field. In the first phase, that data was gathered using models and projections.

The post More bang for your fertilizer buck appeared first on Grainews.

The nitrogen-fixing family of plants, Leguminosae, number in the tens of thousands. These nitrogen-fixing legumes range in size from tiny clovers to shrubs like caragana and to full-sized trees. Our agriculturally well-known legume crops range from peas and beans to alfalfa, peanuts and soybeans.

Nitrogen is also fixed on the prairies by free-living bacteria, fungi and different bacteria in association with common shrubs and trees like wolf willow and alder. And, you may be surprised to learn that about 15 per cent of the world supply of nitrogen comes from lightning storms in the form of nitrates.

The Haber process for manufacturing nitrogen is a sort of modified lightning storm, combining nitrogen with hydrogen to produce ammonia. The industrially fixed bagged nitrogen is no different from the five to 15 pounds of fixed nitrogen that falls on cropland per acre during a lightning storm. In reality, there is no such thing as “synthetic” nitrogen fertilizer or for that matter phosphate, potash or anything else. The term synthetic fertilizer is merely a belief, certainly not a fact.

Nitrogen fixation

Nitrogen-fixing crops of concern to prairie agriculture include alfalfa, clovers of all kinds, dry beans, faba beans, lupins, soybeans, peas, chickpeas, lentils and a few other crops. Legumes generally grow in nitrogen-poor soils, where their ability to fix nitrogen with bacteria gives them a competitive advantage over other competing crops or weeds. Adding nitrogen to a legume crop will remove that growth advantage and also inhibit the legume from forming effective nitrogen-fixing associations with the appropriate bacteria.

When I was a child in Wales in the 1950s, my father would plant red clover crops every third or fourth year. Selective weed control products were non-existent in those days so he would underseed a light crop of wheat with a clover-grass mixture after first fertilizing with phosphate and potash and some sulphate — no nitrogen. After he took off a light wheat crop in August, about 15 to 20 bushels per acre, we would get a huge growth of red clover by October. Undoubtedly, after it was plowed under at the end of the second year, there was a two- to three-year supply of nitrogen in the soil from the clover crop’s nitrogen fixation.

Nitrogen-fixing legume bacteria which we call rhizobia are characterized by their ability to infect the root hairs of legumes. These rhizobia live freely in all agricultural soils in a living active vegetative state. They do not form resting spores. These soil-dwelling rhizobia use sugars and soil acids as their sources of growth and energy. If there are wild legumes such as vetches around your farm, or stray alfalfa, they will be naturally inoculated by wild rhizobia in the soil.

Rhizobia species are generally divided into six major groups for agricultural purposes.

• Rhizobium meliloti: alfalfa and lotus types
• R. trifolii: clovers of all kinds
• R. leguminosarum: peas, faba beans, lentils
• R. phaseoli: dry beans
• R. lupini: lupins
• R. japonicum: soybeans

These rhizobial bacteria are easily propagated in laboratory culture and are generally very specific to the type of legume that they infect and nodulate. For example, Rhizobium leguminosarum can form a nitrogen-fixing partnership with peas, faba beans or lentils but not dry beans or chickpeas.

Soybeans, native to China must be inoculated with Rhizobium japonicum, which, like other rhizobia, are mixed in peat, peat pellets or liquid formulations. The soybean inoculant may not survive our Prairie winters, so to fix 60 or so pounds of additional nitrogen, soybeans may have to be inoculated every year.

On the other hand, R. leguminosarum is ever-present and adapted to Prairie soils, so if you grow peas, lentils or faba beans every few years your soil may have adequate nodulation bacteria to fix 50 to 150 pounds of “free” nitrogen. If you forget to inoculate peas, faba beans or lentils they will nodulate anyway, as you have grown them recently in that field. However, researchers have developed more specific strains of rhizobia — it’s often well worth the purchase price to have additional nitrogen fixation by these superior strains.

If you regularly grow peas or lentils you should leave a check strip with no inoculant and check the nodulation and or yield. Active nodulation is generally close to the main root and the healthy nitrogen producing nodules are a red/pink in colour when sliced open.

Effective inoculants on pulse crops or alfalfa hay can fix 50 to 200 or more pounds of nitrogen per acre. Just work out the cost savings on nitrogen fertilizer on a section of land.

Never do this with inoculant

Buying rhizobial inoculant is like buying a bunch of cut flowers. You wouldn’t leave the cut flowers in the truck cab on a sunny day, and you wouldn’t let them sit for weeks or months before bringing them into the house. Instead, you put them in a vase of cool water as soon as possible.

• NEVER leave inoculant of any kind sitting in the truck cab where the high temperature of 40+ C will quickly kill off the rhizobia.
• NEVER let the inoculant sit around for weeks or months on end before use. Store it in a cool refrigerator to keep the rhizobia alive and healthy.
• NEVER use last year’s inoculant. The rhizobial bacteria are likely all dead.
• NEVER mix inoculant with a seed treatment or micronutrient that contains zinc or copper.
• NEVER leave a liquid inoculant for many days on unplanted seed.
• NEVER skip an inoculant application if you grow soybeans on the prairies.

Remember, rhizobial inoculants are living, breathing fragile bacteria. You need to keep them fully fresh and active for best results.

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Precision agriculture tools are improving the accuracy of where fertilizer is placed so that as much of it as possible reaches the plants that need it.

And researchers from at least two Canadian universities — Ottawa’s Carleton University and Western University in London, Ont. — are working on smart fertilizers that only deploy when the plants are in need of nutrients.

The latest approach is developing crops that can fertilize themselves. It’s something that life sciences giant Bayer is betting heavily on — the German multinational recently announced a new partnership with Boston-based biotech start-up Ginkgo Bioworks to create a new company focused on the plant biome.

The goal of the yet-to-be-named company, funded through a US$100 million investment by Bayer, Ginkgo and U.S. hedge fund Viking Global Investors, is to lessen dependence on chemical fertilizers by letting plants create their own.

Here’s how it works

Legume crops like beans, peas, lentils, soybeans and peanuts can fix nitrogen naturally. They attract bacteria called rhizobia that form little nodules on a plant’s roots and then work to convert free nitrogen from the air and soil into ammonia. This helps the plant feed itself without needing any — or as much — added fertilizers.

Other crops like corn, wheat, and rice — some of the world’s leading staple food crops —aren’t attractive hosts to the nitrogen-fixing microbes, making their fertilizer needs pretty high. Not only is this expensive for farmers, but there are environmental impacts, too, ranging from carbon emissions to algal blooms.

The Bayer/Gingko partnership is hoping to create what some are calling designer bacteria: developing nitrogen-fixing microbes that are attracted to the roots of any plant (not just legumes) so that they can be attached to wheat or corn seed, for example, through a special coating.

It won’t be an easy undertaking, though.

Scientists will need to search through hundreds of thousands of bacteria to find potential microbes for sequencing in an effort to determine which genes are behind nitrogen-fixing activity. Once those are identified, they can be used to develop custom DNA for new, scientifically designed bacteria. There’s no certainty, however, on how those microbes will react once they’re outside the lab and exposed to the complex soil environment.

If successful, this could be a game changer for agriculture with significant impacts on global fertilizer markets. According to market research reports, the value of the global nitrogenous fertilizer market was pegged at over US$107 billion in 2016, with expectations that this will reach approximately US$127 billion by 2021.

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Pulsea crop growers are no doubt familiar with BASF’s Nodulator and Monsanto BioAG’s TagTeam pulse crop inoculants. They’ve been around for years.

For the 2018 growing season BASF is introducing Nodulator Duo, a product that adds a soil bacterium to the inoculant. It has the ability to enhance and strengthen root development.

Monsanto BioAg last year introduced TagTeam LCO which is a triple action granular inoculant. The LCO component, short for lipochitooligosaccharide, is a natural soil molecule that “enhances” communications in the root zone improving the nitrogen fixing performance of the rhizobium.

Both are granular products to be used with pea and lentil crops.

New from BASF

Early field trials with Nodulator Duo (2017 yield results are not in yet) show including the bacterium with the inoculant produced on average a three bushel yield increase with peas and about a 1.5 bushel yield increase with lentils, says Russell Trischuk, BASF regional technical manager.

“BASF has development projects in different parts of the world,” he says. “And Nodulator Duo is truly a made in Canada product for Canadian producers. We are very excited about that.”

The “duo” is a combination of the Nodulator rhizobium and a strain of bacterium (Bacillus subtillis) identified as BU 1814. They are combined in a solid core granule.

The activity of the bacterium is part of a fairly complex process involving soil biology. “When included with the inoculant in the seed row the native bacterium has a mutually beneficial relationship with the plant,” says Trischuk. “As the root grows and cells slough off and distribute through the soil, the bacterium feeds off those cells and in exchange they colonize the plant root system offering protection of the roots as they grow through the soil.” It’s called a root strengthening bio-film that enhances root and plant growth.

While that process isn’t directly connected to the activity of the nitrogen fixing rhizobium it does have a “very positive relationship”, he says. They’ve measured increased nitrogen fixation, increased nodulation and even the shape and location of the nodules is affected. While the N-fixing nodules usually form near the crown of the roots, the addition of BU 1814 seems to encourage nodulation in different areas of the roots.

What all this science means from a farmer perspective, says Trischuk is a more vigorous pulse crop plant stand, that flowers longer, stays green longer, produces larger pods and more pea and lentil seeds per pod. He says there is even some evidence of crops showing improved tolerance to stresses such as dry growing conditions.

Improved lines of communcations

Including the LCO component in TagTeam LCO improves communication between the roots and the rhizobium which is particularly beneficial under stressful growing conditions, says Jon Treloar, Monsanto BioAg technical agronomist. Their field trials, with peas for example, show up to 2.5 bushel yield increase over competing products.

“The LCO molecule is involved in communicating between the rhizobium and the plant roots,” says Treloar. “The molecule signals the plant roots to prepare for nodulation and nitrogen fixation. That molecule is naturally occurring and always present in the soil, but under stressful environmental conditions (being too cold, too wet, too dry, for example) that communication can be delayed. By adding it to the inoculant we are in essence short circuiting the natural communication process and speeding up nodulation.”

TagTeam LCO was introduced for the 2016 growing season. It showed improved yield performance over the conventional TagTeam and about a 2.5 bushel yield increase over other pulse crop inoculants.

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A team of researchers, led by Dr. Abdelali Hannoufa at AAFC’s London Research and Development Centre in Ontario, working in collaboration with industry partner, Forage Genetics International in the United States, discovered the gene called microRNA156.

MicroRNA156 “is a master gene regulator,” says Hannoufa. “It functions by regulating a network of other genes, called downstream genes, which control yield, stress tolerance, and other traits.”

The gene works in a number of ways to make the alfalfa plant more drought tolerant. “In alfalfa, we found that this gene causes certain effects that make the plants more resistant to drought stress,” says Hannoufa. “One of the physiological effects is it allows the plant to maintain water, so it reduces water loss under drought conditions, and allows the plant to survive longer under water shortages. Also, plants with high levels of this gene have longer roots and more branched roots, which allow them to reach deeper into the soil to absorb water. These plants have enhanced levels of chemicals called compatible solutes in their cells, which also help the plant to retain water.”

The gene also produces more biomass and delays flowering; two characteristics that are very desirable for cattle producers. “Alfalfa producers want to maximize forage yield and so they try to delay harvest as much as possible, but delaying harvest usually reduces forage quality,” says Hannoufa. “This gene delays flowering, so producers can increase yield but without negatively impacting quality.”

Another effect of the gene is to improve nitrogen fixation. “The plants have longer roots but they also have more nodules, which allow them to fix nitrogen at a higher rate,” he says. “This basically means reduced fertilizer use because the plants are able to get the nitrogen from the soil, which benefits farmers, and also the environment because you reduce fuel use and nitrogen losses.”

Hannoufa says the gene has potential to provide the same benefits in other forage crops such as red clover, and allow them to grow on marginal land. The benefits could be two-fold for cattle producers facing high land prices, allowing them to use marginal land for forage acres, or potentially providing a source of revenue as a bio-energy crop.

“In order for alfalfa to be competitive as a bioenergy crop it needs to be able to grow on marginal land,” says Hannoufa. “So the ability of this gene to allow alfalfa to grow under drought conditions, in addition to the increased biomass production, and improved nitrogen fixation, would allow it to be grown on marginal lands and not compete against food crops like corn, soybean or others.”

It will be some time before farmers will be able to plant commercial varieties of drought-resistant alfalfa. All the research to date has been under controlled greenhouse conditions and the next step, says Hannoufa, is to work with collaborators to test the new strains under normal field conditions across North America. †

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