It’s always blamed on excessive nitrogen causing excessive growth. Many growers in such wet seasons try various growth regulators, often with little or no effect, hoping to prevent crop lodging.

Let’s get to the real reason why wheat lodges in wet or rainy seasons.

Soils most prone to wheat lodging in wet seasons are:

• sandy,
• sandy/loam,
• sandy/high organic matter,
• heavy in cattle manure applications, and/or
• silt soils along old river courses.

What do these soils have in common? They’re usually very low in available copper in the top six to eight inches, often of the order of 0.2 to 0.5 parts per million (ppm).

Testing, treating for soil copper

Potato growers favour sandy, silty soils. They’re the best soil types for clean, mud-free potato production.

What do potato growers do when they rent such sandy fields from neighbouring grain growers? They perform extensive soil tests — not only for macronutrients, but for micronutrients as well. They may add several pounds of manganese, zinc, copper and boron if necessary per acre. If copper levels are low (below one ppm) in sandy soils, potato growers will add three pounds of copper (12 pounds of bluestone) per acre to bring the copper level up to two ppm.

What happens when farmers plant a wheat crop following potatoes in the rotation? They usually brag about the big jump in wheat yield. They ascribe the yield increase to leftover nitrogen or phosphate from the potato crop. I do not agree.

I live in an area of many potato growers and lots of sandy cropland. I am pretty convinced the jump in the wheat yield following a potato crop is due to copper. To further prove my point, I will show what happened to two adjacent wheat quarters I followed in 2025 on the east and west side of Range Road 272 to the west of Edmonton.

I selected two fields sown to wheat. Both were sandy loam soil types seeded in late April. Both fields looked good in June and were headed out in early July. During late June, July and early August, the wheat field areas got around one inch of rain almost once a week, to a total of eight or more inches. All crops in the area looked good. In sandy soil, an inch of rain may move eight to 10 inches down, but not much deeper.

The field to the west had grown potatoes the year previously. The field to the east, to my knowledge, had never grown potatoes. By late August, the west field looked to be in excellent shape. I estimated an 80-plus bushel crop of possibly No. 1 or No. 2 wheat.

The field to the east, meanwhile, was very badly lodged and the crop itself was perhaps 10 days to two weeks behind in maturity. My simple diagnosis is that the field to the west had adequate soil copper reserves, whereas the soil to the east was copper-starved or deficient.

Copper’s function in production

There’s also the matter of disease. In the same wet weather, lodging can be accompanied by significant ergot infection of the grain heads, particularly in wheat and sometimes in barley.

Copper is essential for pollen fertility and for ergot prevention.

Two — yes, two — copper-based enzymes are needed for lignin biosynthesis that results in stem strength. Lignin is the “rod” that holds up the wheat stem, according to Horst Marschner’s book, Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants.

Farmers have been removing crops from Prairie cropland for 100 to 150 years or more. As they deplete macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphate, potash and sulphur, they have soil tested and replaced them. What about the micronutrients every crop or cow also removes? Production draws down on micronutrient reserves. Can farmers accept that, in many soil types, their copper or perhaps zinc or manganese is critically low?

Minnesota potato grower recommendations state that for soils not in vegetable production within two years or where micronutrients are known to be low, farmers should put down five pounds an acre of manganese, three of zinc, four of iron, three of copper and 1.5 of boron.

“Use soil testing to monitor micronutrient status every two years to avoid micronutrient toxicity, because some micronutrients can build up in the soil,” the resource warns.

Now that you know you have been draining on-soil micronutrient reserves in grams per year as you harvest your crops, you must replace these missing reserves.

Most unfarmed sandy soils have one to two pounds of copper available in the top six inches of soil per acre and about two to three pounds of zinc. A 60-bushel crop of wheat will remove up to half an ounce of copper. How many cereal crops can you take off your cropland before you deplete your micronutrient reserves in your topsoil?

Livestock’s leavings and lodging

A common way to lodge a cereal crop is to place 15 to 25 tons of cattle manure onto sandy soil in particular. What usually happens, and I have heard it repeated many times, is that the cereal crop — especially wheat — has taken up too much nitrogen. I disagree.

The carbon:nitrogen ratio of such manure is about 30:1. Wheat straw is about 80:1. Thus, when manure is applied to cropland, it has a severe deficiency of nitrogen.

What really happens is that cropland soil per gram or ounce has billions of microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria. These microorganisms seize on the limited nitrogen, as well as other nutrients in the soil (potassium, phosphorus and sulphur) and including micronutrients such as boron, copper, zinc and manganese. The real cause of the lodging is the fact that the micronutrients take up the limited soil copper, depriving the wheat plants. Copper enzymes being essential for wheat stem strength, the result is crop lodging.

If you manure sandy soil, in particular, and your soil copper level is below 0.5 ppm, you must add copper to prevent lodging at around five lb. an acre (20 pounds of bluestone) and up your nitrogen (depending on existing soil nitrogen) by 60 to 100 pounds per acre.

I examined a sandy field of wheat in the Camrose, Alta., area that went 20 bushels an acre after a very heavy application of manure. The next year, the farmer applied, with a Valmar spreader, about four pounds of copper per acre (16 pounds of bluestone), drilled in some 60 pounds of nitrogen and seeded again to wheat. With the added copper and nitrogen, the field went 70 bushels an acre of No. 2 wheat.

Cereal growers must think like potato growers. Give the crop the optimum macro- and micronutrients in order to get an optimum target yield for your area.

The post Cereal lodging isn’t just a nitrogen problem appeared first on Grainews.

Touted as a first-of-its kind foliar-applied nitrogen, alignN 18-0-0 is formulated for nitrogen-demanding crops like canola and wheat. It gives growers the ability to apply encapsulated urea nitrogen directly onto and into the leaf, where it is absorbed for maximum intake and metabolism while reducing nutrient loss.

“Canadian growers now have a new way to protect their precious fertilizer investments,” said Norm Davy, president and chief commercial officer for Tidal Grow AgriScience.

“Our precise formulation of alignN allows nitrogen to bond electrostatically to the plant, helping keep it available under challenging conditions and reducing losses from volatilization, leaching, and runoff.”

The company said AlignN demonstrated effective in-season nitrogen response on wheat with up to 22 increase increase in flag-leaf diameter, a boost in protein content, and increased yield by up to seven per cent, with net returns offering $10-$25 per acre. This despite “extreme drought” conditions.

Similar results appeared in canola trials with increased yield of up to 10 per cent and more than one per cent boost in oil content, with net returns of $15-$35 per acre.

AligN is compatible with most herbicides, fungicides, and other nutrient inputs.

The post New foliar-applied nitrogen enters Canadian market appeared first on Grainews.

A few years back I checked on a number of canola and grain fields north of Edmonton that had been heavily hailed in late June. All the fields, encompassing several thousand acres, looked like chopped vegetable salads. The owners talked wipeouts for the season but I advised them to wait a few weeks. Well, by late July all the fields were growing well and healthy in a good-moisture year, but obviously a month behind in crop maturity. At the end of a rainy summer and a long frost-free fall, all of the growers in the hailed area took off crops close to their target yields.

Thunderstorms with heavy rain and little or no hail can, depending on intensity, produce as much as five to 10 lb. of nitrate per acre from the reactive nitrogen dioxide produced by the lightning. Such storms contribute as much as one seventh of the planet’s fixed nitrogen fertilizer.

When you observe a thunderstorm, you’ll see the lightning bolts of the storm repeatedly strike into the ground, unless of course there is some high-ground tower nearby. Have you ever wondered what that lightning bolt did when it hit the Earth?

My first test came in Ontario in 1972 when I was checking out a rutabaga crop that was partially infested on a lower part of the field with clubroot. For your information, a rutabaga is just a winter annual Argentine canola. I found there was 100 per cent infection of the rutabagas in this lower part — but there was one healthy rutabaga, plumb in the middle of this group. I dug up this rutabaga and replanted it in a University of Guelph greenhouse, thinking that I had discovered a new kind of resistance, only to find there were already clubroot-resistant rutabagas readily available but customers did not like the varieties. They preferred the very clubroot-susceptible Laurentian rutabaga.

The grower then took me to other parts of the hilly rutabaga field and pointed out several dead, damaged areas of rutabagas. These damaged rutabagas were in roughly circular patches 10 to 15 feet in diameter. The rutabagas were dead and wilted in the middle of the circles, but healthy on the outer edges. I guessed and said “lightning bolts” – the grower smiled and said yes. He said he’d seen these spots on his lightning-prone cropland for years before he figured out the answer. He complimented me on my guess.

Subsequently, in travelling around Prairie cropland in Western Canada over the years, I pointed out many times that these diseased “spots” in canola, potato and cereal croplands were lightning strikes, to the relative amazement of many farmers. I even diagnosed a “diseased” farm vegetable garden in the Peace region that was indeed a lightning strike.

Bolted down

Unfortunately, lightning strikes can be far more destructive when peat and forest land are involved. I remember talking to Canadian forestry researchers at Edmonton in 1986 about lightning damage The personnel showed one aerial photograph of forest stands in Alberta’s foothills with brown/bleached specks dotted here and there. Again, I guessed lightning damage, as a good guess, and they were very surprised. It had taken them a few years to arrive at lightning bolts as the cause.

The lightning strikes during rainstorms, which killed off groups of trees, did not result in forest fires. Now, with drier weather conditions in recent years, these lightning strikes have frequently started forest fires. The persistence of up to 60 or more of these forest fires in Alberta, for example, is due to dry or fairly dry peat bogs. The irony is that we have people who oppose peat harvesting for horticultural soil mixes without the thought that these drying bogs become major fire hazards during dry windy summers. Peat bog fires can last for years. Vast areas of Russia’s Siberian forests have been severely damaged by fires, due to fire control failures and indiscriminate peat harvesting and drainage projects.

Trouble in the trees

Another aspect of lightning damage is the surprising number of tree “kills.” When you notice in particular very large spruce trees, especially around the more southern Prairie farmsteads, you often see one or more dead spruce trees in the farm shelterbelt or individual dead specimens. It could be disease, or perhaps prolonged spring flooding, but a very common cause is lightning.

Over the years I have been asked to look at specimens of dead spruce trees, both white and Colorado spruce, in cities and rural areas. Many times, I have diagnosed lightning strikes as the cause. How do I know? When lightning hits a spruce tree in, let’s say, August, nothing is obvious. Unfortunately, by May or June the following year, the tree is obviously dead. If indeed lightning was the cause then the lower four to five feet, if not trimmed, will still be green. If the spruce tree is close to a house, the spruce can be healthy green up to the house eaves. Lightning will jump the last few feet into the house or ground. In a shelterbelt, lightning may kill one to perhaps four or five adjacent trees.

Remember, lightning strikes are very common on the Prairies, so when you see these odd dead patches of cropland or suddenly dead spruce trees, think of those summer storms. If lightning hits a cottonwood or pine tree it usually causes the upper branches to split severely, damaging the tree, which may not be killed, as with a spruce tree.

On the old fable that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, I have proof that it can and does. The Leduc Rugby Club (near Edmonton) has had to replace one of its 40-foot (13-metre) goal posts twice in two years, due to them being shattered by lightning strikes at the exact same spot.

The post Lightning gives and takes in Prairie fields appeared first on Grainews.

Researchers at the university used CRISPR gene editing technology to increase a naturally-occurring chemical that allows the wheat to fix nitrogen according to a November 25 report from ScienceDaily.

WHY IT MATTERS: Nitrogen fertilizer is an enormous cost for Canadian farmers — not to mention a source of tension due to potential environmental impacts.

“For decades, scientists have been trying to develop cereal crops that produce active root nodules, or trying to colonize cereals with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, without much success. We used a different approach,” said Eduardo Blumwald in the report.

Blumwald is a distinguished professor in the University of California, Davis plant sciences department.

“We said the location of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria is not important, so long as the fixed nitrogen can reach the plant, and the plant can use it.”

Researchers, led by Blumwald, examined 2,800 chemicals that plants make naturally and identified 20 that could encourage nitrogen-fixing bacteria to form biofilms, the report said.

Biofilms are sticky coatings that wrap around the bacteria and produce a low-oxygen environment suitable for nitrogen fixation.

The team identified the genes involved in the process of making these biofilms. They then edited the wheat plants to create more of the related compound, called apigenin. The plants produce more apigenin than they need and the excess is released into the soil.

In experiments, the surplus stimulated soil bacteria to protective biofilms that allowed them to fix nitrogen in a form usable to the wheat plants.

Blumenwald noted that about 500 million acres are planted with cereals in the U.S.

“Imagine, if you could save 10 per cent of the amount of fertilizer being used on that land,” he said. “I’m calculating conservatively: That should be a savings of more than a billion dollars every year.”

The advancement could also support farmers in developing countries.

“In Africa, people don’t use fertilizers because they don’t have money, and farms are small, not larger than six to eight acres,” Blumwald said. “Imagine, you are planting crops that stimulate bacteria in the soil to create the fertilizer that the crops need, naturally. Wow! That’s a big difference!”

The university has a pending patent application for the wheat. Bayer Crop Science provided some of the research funding.

The post California researchers create nitrogen-fixing wheat appeared first on Grainews.

Manitoba’s crop experts outlined one tactic to help farmers find out at the 2025 Crop Diagnostic School earlier this year at Carman.

Farmers using a ‘nitrogen ramp’ approach will increase nitrogen rates in increments, based on soil test recommendations.

It involves taking “whatever the nitrogen recommendation was from your field based in the soil test, and then comparing that to the nitrogen ramp to see, are you actually hitting (the target)?” said Anne Kirk, cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.

“When is it the greenest? And then also, considering, if we’re applying more nitrogen, is that economical as well?” Kirk added.

If you’ve tested a nitrogen ramp in your cereal crop, there are a few ways to determine if your plants are taking up nitrogen as intended.

It can just be gauged by the amount of biomass in your crop and the colour of the leaf tissue to the naked eye, Kirk said — but there’s a catch to that strategy. Changing light conditions throughout the day can trick the eye and make it difficult to gauge differences in the shades of green in the leaves.

Farmers can take the guesswork out of the process with a nitrogen ramp calibration strip, she noted. Similar to a paint colour swatch you might see in the local hardware store’s paint department, the tool can help give more concrete insight.

“It’s not to identify which one is sufficient or deficient,” but rather is a comparative measure, she cautioned.

“If you have 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre compared to 100, is there actually a colour difference, or are they about the same?”

For the more tech-savvy, a device called a SPAD meter measures the amount of chlorophyll in a leaf. To take a reading, the user presses the flag leaf between the two paddles on the meter.

Kirk noted that while these readings don’t mean much on their own and do not replace soil nitrogen testing, they can be helpful when measuring against other parts of your field or where a different application rate was put down.

Nitrogen application strategies

When it comes to fall or spring nitrogen application in winter cereals, there are pros and cons to both.

“If you’re applying all of your nitrogen in the fall, the risk is that you can have excessive leaching if you have a wet fall,” Kirk said. “You can also have denitrification (gassing off of that nitrogen) and it wouldn’t be available to the plants.”

A full burst of nitrogen in the fall could also lead to excessive top growth in your plants, which could mean a less healthy crown going into winter and perhaps more winterkill, added Kirk.

“If you apply all of your nitrogen in the spring, the risk is that it could be dry … and if it doesn’t rain, that nitrogen isn’t actually getting down into the soil to your plant,” she added.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, field conditions in a wet spring could mean a grower may not get nitrogen on the field before it’s too late.

To avoid risk, Kirk suggests using a split N application — a portion applied in the fall and a portion in the spring to reduce the risks from both of these types of potential losses.

The key is making sure that nutrient is available to winter cereals when the crop is likely to need it the most.

“We know that winter wheat takes up about 30 to 40 per cent of its total nitrogen needs by stem elongation,” said Kirk. “So we really want to make sure that nitrogen is on and available for the plant by the time stem elongation happens.”

For more information on nitrogen ramp calibration strips, visit the Manitoba Agriculture website.

The post Ramp up your nitrogen efficiency in winter cereals appeared first on Grainews.

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.

The post Syngenta rolls out Envita Dry nitrogen-fixing biological appeared first on Grainews.

Urea fertilizer, with nitrogen-use efficiencies nearing 60 per cent, is the dominant form of nitrogen (N) fertilization on the Canadian Prairies today.

In the project, granular urea was tested against two “alternative” granular fertilizers used in Europe and Australia — ammonium sulphate nitrate (ASN) and calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) — to see whether they could provide Prairie spring wheat growers with a viable alternative source of N, said UAlberta’s Kris Guenette, the study’s corresponding author.

WHY IT MATTERS: Facing a policy focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer, Prairie farmers need to know whether other N delivery systems offer anywhere near the same crop yields.

Also in the mix were a couple of N stabilizers (also called inhibitors), including DMPSA (3,4-dimethylpyrazole succinic acid) and urease inhibitor NBPT (N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide). Both were measured for yield.

Ultimately, none of the alternative treatments showed any more than marginal effects on wheat yield, although the stabilizers performed their primary jobs of reducing N loss from the soil as nitrous oxide (N₂O) and preventing the loss of urea through volatilization, explained Guenette.

The emissions results — although not quantified — are in line with trials conducted in 2024 by Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) that showed nitrification and urease inhibitors are effective at reducing N₂O emissions in winter wheat.

“The cool thing about it is, as soon as you add any form of inhibitor, you’re pretty much reaching that 30 per cent reduction in N₂O emissions right off the hop,” said DUC winter wheat specialist Alex Griffiths in a 2024 Manitoba Co-operator story, referring to the federal government’s 30 per cent reduction target in N₂O emissions on farms by 2030.

“We don’t need to cut our nitrogen rates by 30 per cent. You can just apply an inhibitor, and you’re probably going to be good.”

However, Guenette urged producers to weigh the costs of N stabilizers from both agronomic and environmental perspectives. He noted that their effectiveness is highly situation-specific and depends on factors such as precipitation, soil type, fertilizer strategy and crop genetics.

“They may have an environmental benefit, but they may not always have an agronomic benefit,” he said, adding growers shouldn’t expect N stabilizers to make a significant difference in spring wheat yield.

The setup

The project was conducted at two Alberta sites: Lethbridge (on irrigated dark brown chernozem) and Barrhead, 120 kilometres northwest of Edmonton (on dark grey luvisol).

The site choices were not random, but rather based on farming density and regional access to AAFC facilities, explained Guenette.

An unfertilized control was used in the first five treatments to compare results with ASN and CAN. Barrhead trials used Canada Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat, while Lethbridge used Canada Western Amber Durum (CWAD), reflecting local cropping patterns.

Fertilizer rates at Barrhead were 89 pounds of nitrogen per acre and 36 pounds at Lethbridge.

The next four treatments compared untreated urea to urea treated with either a 3,4-dimethylpyrazole succinic acid (DMPSA) nitrification inhibitor, an NBPT urease inhibitor, or a dual urease and nitrification inhibitor.

Each treatment received phosphorus in the forms of 17.8 pounds of phosphorus pentoxide (P₂O₅) per acre in the seed row and the same amount plus 13.4 pounds of potassium oxide (K₂O) in the mid-row band.

Few differences emerged between the fertilizer formulations, the inhibitor treatments and the wheat classes when it came to shoot N uptake. Similarly, total N uptake was much the same across treatments and soil types.

When averaged across wheat class and site years, there were no significant yield differences among any of the fertilizers, including untreated urea.

Deep-banding the secret weapon?

The lack of difference between treatments may have resulted from deep-banding fertilizer. This practice tends to reduce some volatilization and N-losses even without inhibitors. This is why urea and the alternative fertilizers performed similarly.

So how deep should fertilizers be banded? That was beyond the scope of the study, said Guenette, but generally-speaking, the deeper you band, the less risk you have of losing N fertilizer. He added that the ideal banding depth varies based on the farmer and their equipment. Some go as deep as four inches, others as shallow as two.

“It really depends on how deep they want to go.”

However, deep-banding has its risks.

“The further you place that band of fertilizer away from your seed or seed root, the longer it may take for that root to interact with it and therefore become available for the plant.”

Guenette is admittedly disappointed that nitrogen loss reduction — often viewed from an environmental perspective — was outside the scope of the project. He said there’s currently no clear economic incentive for producers to adopt practices that reduce nitrogen loss. He added that if environmental stewardship carried measurable value, producers might view these efforts differently.

“Perhaps this could be looked at in a different light instead of through the producer lens of purely agronomic outcome.”

— with files from Don Norman of Grainews

The post Urea stands tall, production-wise, against ‘alternative’ nitrogen fertilizers appeared first on Grainews.

Speaking at a July 29 field day in Carman, Man., research agronomist Kristen MacMillan said she’s in the final year of a study examining how much nitrogen dry beans can fix from the atmosphere through nodulation and whether lower fertilizer rates could be viable for Prairie conditions.

“We’re still waiting for the final results of this study, but almost 50-per-cent reduction in the nitrogen rate would have really important economic benefits for farmers,” said MacMillan.

That finding could come at an ideal time. Manitoba farmers planted a record 207,000 acres of dry beans in 2025 — including a record-high 123,000 acres of pintos — the highest dry bean acreage in two decades.

Dry beans are in the same legume family as peas and soybeans, well known for fixing their own nitrogen out of the atmosphere. Dry beans, though, are worse at it.

“The main reason is that it’s non-selective as a host, so it’s fairly promiscuous with the rhizobia in the soil, and that reduces its efficiency in fixing nitrogen,” said MacMillan.

That reputation has led to full fertilizer programs as standard practice. But MacMillan’s current trials aim to test whether modern cultivars — grown in Manitoba soils that have seen decades of pulse production — might be capable of fixing more nitrogen than previously thought.

Two earlier studies that MacMillan worked on showed that dry beans did respond to fertilizer, but not at economically optimal levels. MacMillan’s earlier work also looked at inoculants, which varied by product.

‘Lazy’ plants

A summary of dry bean nitrogen and nodulation on-farm trials from the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean growers said that yield increased in small plot pinto and navy beans at high nitrogen rates of 140 pounds per acre.

“When considering the return on investment, it was statistically the same for all rates of N application, meaning the economic optimum rate was to not apply any N fertilizer at all,” the summary noted.

It also cited black and pinto bean trials at Brandon, Melita and Carberry from 2021-2022, which found no yield change with different fertilizer rates, with the exception of uninoculated black beans in Melita in 2022.

The same resource noted that fertilizer had an inverse relationship with nodulation. The more fertilizer they put on, the less nodulation they saw.

Plants “become ‘lazy’ and rely on soil nitrogen alone,” the grower group said.

The focus of MacMillan’s current research is to show how much atmospheric nitrogen dry beans are fixing under Manitoba conditions, and whether that amount changes depending on nitrogen rate and inoculation.

One set of plots is measuring nitrogen fixation across 12 popular dry bean cultivars using a method called “natural abundance,” which tracks nitrogen isotopes. A second trial is testing nitrogen fixation under different fertilizer rates, with or without inoculant.

“The hypothesis that’s being tested is whether we can move from a full rate of N fertilizer down to a low rate and still maximize yield,” she said.

Dry beans in Manitoba typically yield around 2,000 pounds per acre, which translates to about 90 pounds of nitrogen. MacMillan said literature suggests N fixation could provide up to 20 to 40 per cent of that requirement — a meaningful contribution, especially when combined with residual nitrogen already in the soil.

In addition to saving farmers money, less nitrogen applied means less nitrous oxide — a heavily-scrutinized greenhouse gas — is released into the atmosphere.

“Environmentally, this could lead to less nitrogen-intensive cropping systems when it comes to growing dry beans,” she said.

The post Lower nitrogen rates in dry beans could pay off for farmers appeared first on Grainews.

“It was, you know, exciting,” Nykolaishen said, adding he “put a lot of work into this, and to get recognized like that was pretty fulfilling.”

Nytro and Green Lightning received the award for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form. It’s meant to help farmers reduce the cost of their nitrogen inputs.

“What you get is essentially water, but it has elevated levels of nitrate/nitrogen in the water,” he said. “It’s used as fertilizer, generally foliar application, so you spray it on, but it can be applied into the dirt at seeding time as well.”

—> WATCH: For more from Chris Nykolaishen, click here.

The 10-foot container model allows farmers to cheaply create their own nitrogen.

“The proposition of the Green Lightning Machine is to reduce your cost input year-in and year-out,” Nykolaishen said. “The cost-per-pound of nitrogen through the machine is approximately three and a half cents.”

The innovation award Nytro and Green Lightning took home was for sustainability. Nykolaishen explained the machine’s environmental benefits.

“First and foremost, the product is salt-free, so you’re not adding any salt to the soil.”

“And then you’re making it on your farm,” he said. “Synthetic fertilizers generally come in (from) overseas and getting to port and then having to get out to your farm. This is made on your farm, you know, where you need it.”

The post Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award appeared first on Grainews.

Nitrogen is a critical nutrient, essential to life and agriculture, but its byproduct, nitrous oxide (N₂O), is also a powerful greenhouse gas, emissions of which the federal government has aimed to slash.

Canadian agriculture is now several years into the federal goal to reduce N fertilizer emissions by 30 per cent below 2020 levels by the end of the decade. Similar regulations have caused tension in the European Union and elsewhere.

Kate Congreves, a University of Saskatchewan associate professor, has been researching how to improve crop production while limiting nitrogen emissions as part of the second Diverse Field Crops Cluster (DFCC). The most recent five-year cluster started in 2024.

Preliminary results keyed in on the mix of different application techniques and products that resulted in more efficient nitrogen management.

READ MORE: Rethinking nitrogen efficiency

“Nitrogen fertilizers are the largest source of anthropogenic N₂O emissions,” she said during a March presentation.

“What this means (is), if fertilizers and fertilizer applications are a large source of N₂O emissions, anthropogenic N₂O emissions, that means our adjustments to fertilizer and fertilizer management do have an impact on reducing emissions.”

DFCC focuses on research on diverse crops such as camelina, carinata, flax, sunflower and mustard. Spring wheat is tapped as a control.

One of her hopes is to identify “double wins” — that is, the high-value crops associated with the lowest emissions.

Win-wins

The project builds on nitrogen emission test results and practices established in Nitrous Oxide Emission Reduction Protocol (NERP), created in collaboration with Fertilizer Canada. NERP forms a set of guidelines, with a goal of helping the producer hone their N management, reduce emissions, but also protect their crop production.

There are three levels for NERP: basic, intermediate and advanced. “Basic” uses ammonium-based fertilizer applied at seeding, with a rate established from soil testing information. “Intermediate” expands management to include options such as enhanced-efficiency fertilizers, applied at a reduced rate (around 75 per cent of the basic rate), since less would be presumably needed for the same crop effect. “Advanced” NERP guidelines use enhanced-efficiency fertilizer as well, but applied with split application between seeding and in-season.

These guidelines are followed closely in the DFCC project. Congreves uses SuperU at the intermediate level as the enhanced efficiency product, and SuperU with split application at the advanced level. Intermediate treatments band at 75 per cent rates of the basic treatments, and advanced bands at 75 per cent of intermediate (totalled between applications), the first of which occurs at seeding and the second at crop emergence. The in-season application was done with backpack sprayers to ensure uniformity of application.

The project has three research sites in Saskatchewan. Each site is on clay loam soil with similar levels of organic matter and pH. Background soil N, however, is varied. The sites are categorized as having low, moderate or high existing nitrogen levels.

“The background nitrogen levels, they do have an influence on nitrogen cycling,” Congreves says. “And soil priming affects how much nitrogen that would subsequently get released from soil organic matter, for example, and then you’ve got nitrogen from the fertilizer.”

These background levels were one of the factors that went into determining the plots’ treatment levels. Others were consultation of crop fertilizer guidelines, reviews of estimates for soil mineralized land potential during the growing season, and NERP guidelines.

Sampling

Seeding across all sites was underway in mid- to late May 2024. Bases that would allow the team to measure emissions were installed immediately following seeding and fertilizer passes, placed in every plot, maintained throughout the season and sealed at the surface of the soil. Chambers were attached to the top of the bases to capture gases to be measured.

Samples were taken several times a week, but more frequently right after seeding and rainfall events, as these periods see the most flux (the rate that greenhouse gases are added or removed from the air).

“We go in and seal the chamber air tight and we collect our gas samples… with a syringe,” Congreves says.

Samples are taken at various points after the chamber is sealed. To measure the sample, the team uses gas chromatography, a technique that separates organic or inorganic substances from a gas to be analyzed, so as to see the N₂O concentrations in the emitted gas.

Findings are paired with data kept on soil moisture, temperature, weather condtions and crop production, as well as information from soil and plant samples.

Looking at the results from mustard, Congreves notes that, at the side with moderate levels of background nitrogen, there were incremental “additive” amounts of N₂O throughout the growing season.

“What we’re seeing is N₂O emissions are indeed greater with basic, and then incrementally lower with intermediate, advanced, and then our unfertilized control,” she says.

The site with high background N levels saw larger daily fluxes at application time, but not as many during the growing season. Following this pattern, the site with the lowest background levels had the lowest major emissions.

Congreves says she’s not yet seen any major yield differences associated with the practices. Her 2024 yields had normal rates of variability that were on par with other small plot agronomy trials and aligned with 2024 crop averages.

The other crop data sets show similar patterns.

However, the reasearch is far from wrapped. Spring thaw is a major point of emissions. When the spring 2025 emissions are measured, the cumulative emissions will be adjusted to officially cap off the first year of the project.

“So far we’re indeed seeing, for most crops, the same pattern… so far, based on 2024 preliminary data, improving the nitrogen management practice does tend to practically reduce (cumulative) N₂O emissions.”

Going forward, Congreves notes they plan to link N use efficiency metrics to N₂O data to get a “fuller picture” of what occurs with the gasses and the crops together.

The post Cutting the nitrous oxide emissions without losing yields appeared first on Grainews.