You may think you have your nitrogen management program for corn figured out. Then you hit a year with very wet or very dry weather patterns, and nitrogen deficiency shows up in hybrids where you haven’t seen it before. Or, perhaps you bring new hybrids into your lineup, and they don’t perform as well with your traditional nitrogen recipe as other hybrids.

Maybe you don’t have all the answers about nitrogen yet.

That’s where Steve Moose comes in. The longtime agronomist at the University of Illinois and his graduate students are attempting to push the frontier on nitrogen management in corn, trying unique perspectives in their CornBox plots on the U of I research agronomy farm in Champaign, Ill.

“Lots of work has been done with nitrogen rates over the years, but we’re trying to look deeper for more answers,” Moose says. “We want to know the ‘why’ behind how hybrids use nitrogen. Some appear to use it differently during the season compared to others. There would be value in knowing why that occurs.”

Nitrogen testing

To find answers, Moose and his graduate students are approaching the problem in different ways. In one set of plots in the CornBox, current hybrids are planted in blocks and fertilized with nitrogen at different rates.

“We’ve set it up so that on one side of the main alleyway, a hybrid gets a high rate of nitrogen,” Moose explains. “On the other side of the alley, the same hybrid gets a low rate of nitrogen. The results can be dramatic, and the same hybrid may look very different, especially at very low nitrogen rates.”

Related:Scientists develop corn with built-in nitrogen sensor

In a separate experiment within the CornBox, top hybrids of past decades from Pioneer and Corteva Agriscience genetics are grown in a similar arrangement. Part of each planting of each hybrid receives adequate nitrogen, and part of it doesn’t receive enough nitrogen. The goal is to take measurements and discover what allowed these hybrids to be top producers when supplied with adequate nitrogen, Moose says.

Digital measurements in corn

“We have 21st century measurement technology for several variables related to growing corn,” Moose says. “Yield monitors are accurate today and digital-based, and we also have sophisticated tools to measure weather and climate variables.

“What is much harder to see and measure is the biology component within plants. That is our goal: finding better ways to measure and predict how biology will react and impact performance.”

Moose notes that nitrogen plots within the CornBox are usually 10 by 10 feet. That happens to be one pixel on a current satellite image that they can obtain. Currently, they are getting one satellite image per day of the CornBox plots during the growing season. They hope to learn how to better quantify that information. Obtaining finer resolution is possible but will require more investment.

They also use crop models in their research. For example, three-year data from nitrogen plots indicated corn received an average of about 75 pounds of nitrogen per acre from these soils, before what is supplied by fertilizer.

“Our models predicted it should be about 90 pounds per acre per year,” Moose says. “We are still fine-tuning models, and these plots help us accomplish it.”