-: Well, there's Zach working,
and I believe that that picture was taken by his wife.
So, he doesn't always look cleaned up like that.
But we do it the old-fashioned way, you know,
we don't have any drones, anything like that.
He's out there in whatever temperature it is.
His study is,
really is looking at a few practical questions.
Back when corn was $7 a bushel, there was a lot of interest
in bumping up our corn yields even a couple of bushels,
because you could afford to buy
a number of different things.
There's a lot of products out there
that have micronutrients in them.
It would take everybody in this room to research
every combination of materials that are out there.
So, we had to focus down on some, of fewer
elements, and we were lucky to get a grant
from the Corn Board
that has paid for research over the last four years.
Zach's gonna graduate next May,
so we're kinda wrapping it up,
but you can see the different PI's on the grant.
And we've also had a lot of help,
at least in the beginning part of the study,
from soil testing labs,
as well as some of the suppliers and retailers
in terms of focusing on which of the micronutrients
that we'd be interested in working on.
There are a lot of micronutrients.
We basically focused on the ones
we thought we might have the most success with.
Zinc and iron are the two that we've known
had deficiencies over time.
Boron, there was a lot of interest
when we'd go to farmer meetings
and ask producers or consultants
what they wanted us to study.
Boron came up almost every time.
And there really wasn't any recent information.
So, we have these questions.
Do we have deficiencies in Nebraska?
If so, which ones?
There's been a lot of research over the years
on micronutrients.
So, the other question is, now that we are getting yields
that are 250 bushels, 300 bushels,
is there a reason to re-look at the micronutrients?
Is there something in terms of the timing
of the release from the soils
where we really need it, compared to in the past?
And then, there was some basic questions
of how much of what we apply gets into the plant,
as well as
just trying to enhance nutrition
at a certain time of the season
when the crop physiologically will be growing faster
than what the roots may be able to take up.
So, those are the questions we wanted to answer.
And since they only gave me five minutes,
I decided to dispense with any data
and just answer the questions.
So, the nutrients that we found are zinc and iron.
Will high yielding corn make us change our recommendations?
Well, we kind of punt on that one.
We think that as we remove more nutrients over time,
there's gonna be a quicker draw down.
But these micronutrients are so low
in terms of the quantity needed
that it'll probably be a while
before we get deficiencies here in Nebraska.
Will foliar applications get into the plant?
Zach has been able to show that he's increased
the amount of zinc or iron in the leaves,
even though he may not have increased yield.
So, the answer to that is yes.
And should we use micronutrients to bump up yields?
The answer to that is no evidence yet.
So, thank you.
(applause)
I'm not done, I'm not done.
That's my joke.
I mean, I was thinking, well, five minutes.
Well, that only took me three.
So, I'm gonna keep going, Richard.
(laughter)
I went to,
my father used to tell me that Mark Twain said,
"There's no such thing as a bad short speech."
I tried to find that on the internet.
I don't know if Mark Twain ever said that.
But, I will keep this short.
We do have a NebGuide that goes through all the basics.
And really, I don't know if we will revise it very much.
But our soils are just really well-supplied.
The first year of Zach's field work,
he went out and he took samples at random
from 44 fields.
He took soil samples, plant samples,
and here we just have
a graph of what's in the plant
and what's in the soil.
These red lines are the critical values.
So, any sample below the red line on either side
would be what the industry, the discipline says
are too low, probably could be fertilized.
Now, Zinc is one of the ones that we found
the most deficiencies on.
The other micronutrients, there was really nothing
on either side of those red lines.
So, this is just an example of the fact
that Nebraska has really great soils.
We wanna keep them that way.
But, there's not very many deficiencies.
The next year, he worked with the OnFarm Research Group.
There were 17 strip trials.
You can see up there, he had three significant sites.
Two of them had significant decreases
when they sprayed on the foliar material.
And you can see the average yields up there.
There really wasn't much improvement.
He also, in that same year, he had four intensive sites
where he looked at rates and timing.
But I'm just gonna show you that he was able to increase
his leaf-zinc content, compared to the controls.
But that didn't carry out into the grain yield.
He's also interested in something called biofortification,
so he's also looking for more zinc in the grain
that might be useful in human nutrition.
But, we're not going to spend any time on that.
His last project is a greenhouse study,
looking at different materials to get iron and zinc
in the plant.
And if you go hydroponically, you know,
you can control and have a good check
with no zinc or iron.
And he was able to produce a range of green corn plants.
But at the end of the day,
he wasn't able to increase the iron
Iron was not able to increase the dry matter,
once it was severely deficient,
compared to where he had a fully fertilized plot,
or actually, in this case, pot.
So, basically what I said in the beginning is true.
We don't have a lot of deficiencies,
so we weren't able to increase yields too much.
In his intensive plots, he was able to show
that he can get these materials into the plant,
even though he did not increase yields.
And the greenhouse study with the different iron sources
or carriers, he was not able to sufficiently improve
those deficient plants.
He was able to get some greening,
a little bit of re-greening,
but he did not increase the dry matter.
Now, I'm really done.
(applause)