According to University of Illinois professor Dr. Fred Below, there are “Seven Wonders of the Corn Yield World,” and one of the most important is nitrogen.
Dr. Below developed the “Seven Wonders” as a tool to teach farmers the relative importance of management factors that can impact corn productivity, ranking the top seven factors that can positively impact corn yields. “In our quest to grow 300 bushels and to improve crop management, we need to know those management factors that have the biggest impact on yield and make sure we manage those correctly,” he told me during an interview at the AGROTAIN exhibit during AGCONNECT Expo.
Fred ranks weather and nitrogen as the top two corn yield world wonders. “These wonders interact with each other so that every single thing about nitrogen application and use by the plant is affected by weather,” he says. So, while farmers can’t control the weather, they can control nitrogen loss due to the weather. To that end, Dr. Below included SUPERU® (with AGROTAIN technology) as part of a high tech fertilizer package in his studies. “The AGROTAIN technology like SUPERU is designed to mitigate weather-induced nitrogen losses. This lets the plant respond to the nitrogen, rather than have it be lost,” he said. “So preventing nitrogen loss is number one on the list for achieving high yields.”
The other five “wonders” on Dr. Below’s list include: hybrid selection, previous crop, plant populations, tillage and chemicals.
Listen to my interview with Dr. Below here: Dr. Fred Below