UNDERSTANDING THE SOIL NITROGEN CYCLE AND NITROGEN MANAGEMENT

Dec 14, 2011  |  Today's News

Help your crops perform even better next year by better understanding the Nitrogen cycle and how nitrogen is utilized by your crops.  The Illinois Corn Marketing Board has provided funding to the Plant Management Network to help make this learning opportunity available to Illinois farmers.

Nitrogen, the most abundant element in the atmosphere, is an essential element for plant production. Plants cannot use the atmospheric form of nitrogen, which must be fixated in the soil before it is available to crops.  It is important for growers to understand the nitrogen cycle and the process by which crops take in nitrogen in order to develop management practices. If nitrogen fertilization is managed properly, it enhances the supply available to crops, maximizes economic value, avoids crop losses, and promotes environmental health.

The latest presentation launched by The Plant Management Network (PMN) in its Focus on Corn webcast resource is "The Soil Nitrogen Cycle and Nitrogen Management" by Dr. John Sawyer, Professor and Soil Fertility Extension Specialist at Iowa State University. It is designed to help crop advisers, consultants, and producers understand the soil nitrogen cycle and how it relates to crop management practices.

The presentation covers nitrogen as an essential element, reactivity of nitrogen, sources of nitrogen, and important processes in the nitrogen cycle with a specific emphasis on those related to crop fertilization. This webcast will be available open access until January 31, 2012.

View this presentation at:

http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/edcenter/seminars/corn/NitrogenCycle/

Other Focus on Corn presentations can be found at:

 http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/foc

To take advantage of PMN's full line of resources, please sign up for its free online newsletter at:

http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/update/default.cfm.

Focus on Corn is a publication of the Plant Management Network (PMN), a nonprofit online publisher whose mission is to enhance the health, management, and production of agricultural and horticultural crops. It achieves this mission through applied, science-based resources. PMN is jointly managed by the American Society of Agronomy, American Phytopathological Society, and Crop Science Society of America.