Development and Test of Potassium Management Algorithms for Corn
Study author(s): Ron Potok, Solum, The Mosaic Company, IPNI
Years of study: 2013 – 2014
Location(s): various, throughout MN
Important: for the complete report, including all tables and figures, please download using the links to the right.
summary
The goal of this 1 year project was to produce measurements that could be used to develop algorithms for potassium management. We produced several interesting indicators, including moisture, OM, CEC, and clay component which may impact plant available K. Unfortunately, the yield signal in our test plots was not above the noise, so it is difficult to make strong conclusions based on this work.
As a project, we leveraged the work of several institutions to put together this research project. Although incomplete due to the lack of continuation, this project did spur discussion within industry and between industry and academics. This type of project has the potential to help answer soil fertility questions that matter to the growers of the state of Minnesota, and we appreciated the opportunity to try.
For future work, increasing number of sites and the number of reps within a site will help with increasing the signal-to-noise ratio for yield. Even without the proper statistical significance, we were able to extract some interesting potential indicators which, in the future, may be used to help manage potassium. It would also be very useful to post this data somewhere for future work to use. If AFREC has any resources to create a database for the data in this work, we would gladly put all the raw data into the public sphere for other research organizations to use. The power in this type of work
really starts with more data, more trials, and more years.