Site-specific recommendations for fertilizer provide balanced solutions for farmers.

Photo: Charlie White, Penn State

Photo: Charlie White, Penn State

Problem

How can farmers be more precise in applying fertilizer to corn fields with cover crops?

  • Knowing how much fertilizer to apply is complicated by a lack of available tools to accurately predict the correct amount of nitrogen that is needed for crops in any given year.

Findings

Researchers developed a prototype for an online decision support tool that corn growers can use to adjust nitrogen fertilizer applications. The system uses measurements that farmers and agronomists can easily collect in the field to predict the nitrogen contributed by the soil and cover crops.

  • The team calibrated their tool using a dataset of 73 observations from nine cover crop experiments conducted over a three-year period.

Impact

In the last decade, the wide use of cover crops in rotations with corn has resulted in reductions in both nutrient pollution and sedimentation. This nitrogen recommendation system is an important step toward refining fertilizer applications to meet cash crop demands.

  • Reducing over-application of fertilizer minimizes nitrogen pollution of waterways and helps to boost farmers' bottom lines.

Research Credit

Team

Participating Departments

Partner

  • Ursinus College

Competitive Funding

  • USDA National Institutes of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Agriculture and Food Research Initiative [AFRI])
  • USDA NIFA (Organic Agriculture Research & Extension Initiative [OREI])
  • USDA NIFA (Sustainable Agricultural Systems [SAS])
  • USDA Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NE SARE)
  • USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) (Conservation Innovation Grants)
  • National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Federal and State Appropriations

  • USDA NIFA Hatch Projects PEN04571 and PEN04600, Accession #1003346 and #1009362

Emerging Discoveries

Published Research

Improving a nitrogen mineralization model for predicting unfertilized corn yield

Modeling the contributions of nitrogen mineralization to yield of corn.

Office for Research and Graduate Education

Address

217 Agricultural Administration Building
University Park, PA 16802-2600

Office for Research and Graduate Education

Address

217 Agricultural Administration Building
University Park, PA 16802-2600