Creating “hot streaks” of nitrogen fertilizer in corn is the first step farmers participating in Peterson’s Farms Seed’s Plus20 Elite Agronomy Club are taking to boost yields by 20 bushels per acre this year.

A “hot streak” is a strip in a field where excess N is applied in order to eliminate N as a possible yield-limiting factor. Farmers participating in the program put twice as much N in the strip as they did in the rest of the fields.

Soil testing inside and outside of the hot streak will help determine a midseason N application rate, and will provide information to better understand how N moves through the soil, says Nolan Berg, Peterson Farms Seed precision systems agronomist.

FIRST STEP: Doubling the amount of N in a strip in the field is the first step some Dakota farmers are taking to discover how to increase yields.

“The next steps are where our precision ag specialists get involved as they begin UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] scouting and mapping and N soil-testing. At the end of the season they will create and present a postharvest data analysis to each of our participants,” Berg says.

Peterson Farms Seed is using the 360 Soilscan from 360 Yield Center for in-season soil testing. 360 Soilscan allows in-field monitoring of nitrate levels in the field to quickly determine the corn crop’s “fuel tank,” Berg says.

“This simple, in-season soil test has prompted a number of previous-year Plus20 Elite growers to adopt a new approach to N management,” he says. They have dropped their initial base N rate in anticipation of adding a sidedress application once or twice throughout the season to finish the crop.

“This new N strategy minimizes the risk of running short on N due to leaching and denitrification, in the event of a wet spring, Berg says.

“360 Soilscan enables us to better understand a field’s nitrate levels by testing throughout the visually stressed and good areas, as well as inside the hot streak. Those results, coupled with UAV imagery, provide an excellent method of creating a variable-rate sidedressing prescription that is much more efficient and cost-effective than a traditional flat-rate approach.”

Source: Peterson Farms Seed