About Your Fields, April 2, 2018
In this issue:
1. Now it is Time for the Rest of the Story
2. What's Next?
Now it is Time for the Rest of the Story
For the past couple of weeks we have been discussing some of the micro and macro nutrients essential for crop production and how the interact with other key nutrients. Of the 16 essential nutrients we have covered sulphur, manganese, boron and zinc. We will not cover nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen at this time. If you would like any information about these nutrients along with the one's we will be discussing click on this link Crop Nutrients from Mosaic. This article tells you how each of the essential nutrients work in the plant and you can see what the essential nutrients of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and sulphur remove from your soil at different yield levels for corn, soybeans, and wheat.
As we conclude this series, I will start discussing iron. Iron (Fe) is a key element in chlorophyll production in the plant. It also helps with nitrogen reduction and fixation and lignin formation. These are key functions as a plant needs to make chlorophyll in order to make energy. In soybeans nitrogen fixation is a key to growing a good soybean crop and is also important in lignin, a key component that helps a plant to stand up. One interesting fact about iron is that it's availability is controlled by how much of other elements are present. If your pH is too high you could see an iron deficiency in soybeans called Iron Chlorosis. If phosphorus, manganese or zinc levels are too high in your soil, iron could be less available to the plant.
Next we will cover magnesium and it's role in crop production. Magnesium as with other nutrients that we will discuss in this article plays a key role in chlorophyll production. Each molecule of chlorophyll contains 6.7 percent magnesium. Magnesium also plays a key role in metabolizing phosphorus, which is necessary for cell division, protein formation, and plant respiration. As with many other elements magnesium's availability depends on the pH of the soil. Look at the chart below and you will see many of the essential nutrients are most available when you have a pH of 6.5 to 7.5. This is one of the reasons that Akron has started to recommend pell lime as part of your fertilizer plans. By putting pell lime on most years, we hope to keep your field's at a stable, optimal pH.
As you can see, if you stay in that 6.0 to 7.0 you will hit the "sweet spot" for availability for most of the essential nutrients. In order for you to do this you will need to add our next essential nutrient, calcium. Calcium helps regulate the soil's pH level by replacing hydrogen atoms. Calcium aids in nitrogen fixation in soybeans and it also helps crop residues turn crop residue into organic material. In the plant, calcium aids roots to absorb other nutrients, helps in cell wall formations and nitrate N forms into different proteins need by the plant. Calcium along with sulphur and magnesium are considered secondary nutrients for crop production.
Our next essential nutrient is molybdenum. Molybdenum is essential for nitrogen fixation in soybeans. Fortunately, unless you have a severely acidic soil or sandy, molybdenum is normally not deficient. Applying large amounts of phosphorus will aid the the uptake of molybdenum. Applying large amounts of sulphur will decrease the amounts of molybdenum.
Our final two micro nutrients that we will discuss are copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni). Copper is essential in vitamin A production within the plant, it also aids in protein synthesis. Nickel has only been classified as an essential micro nutrient in the late 20th century. It aids the plant in metabolizing nitrogen, by helping with the urease enzyme production in the plant. Deficiency's of both of these micro nutrients are very rare because so little of either one is necessary for optimal plant growth. If a deficiency symptom is shown by the plant, the best way to treat it would be with a foliar application of the nutrient.
What's Next?
Now that we have finished up our discussion of the essential nutrients for optimal crop production, and before that we talked about how to properly develop your crop from the ground up, I thought we would start a discussion of other things needed to get ready for the new crop year. As I am writing this I can't believe that it is the first week of April and many of you had just experienced your second consecutive weekend of snow. I saw a tweet over the weekend that asked "If it rains on Easter Sunday, we will get 7 Sunday's of rain following". I sure hope that since it snowed on Easter Sunday that we will have snow the next 7 Sunday's, but I guess we will have to see what God has is store for us. No matter what happens, we will eventually get a chance to start planting our crop. With that in mind I found two different articles that dealt with how to plant your crop. In the first article 12 Overlooked Preplanting Tasks simple maintenance chores are discussed. I imagine many of you have already done what is being discussed, but it never hurts to create a check list and make sure things are done properly. In the second article Stop Planting Sins people like BASF's AJ Woodyard talk about how and in what conditions you should be planting. They also say that we should be paying attention to not just be planting in the proper conditions, but also spreading fertilizer, and working ground. As I have said in previous issues of About Your Fields " you only get one chance to do it right the first time". I hope you all had a good Easter and we will talk to you next week.