00:00:00 Hi, this is Kelly Garrett and Mike Evans. We're coming to you today from our conference room with our big fancy TV screen, 00:00:07 and we wanna talk to you about sustainable farming, nitrogen reduction, you know, a lot of the buzzwords that are in our industry. 00:00:14 Sustainable farming, you know, being efficient with our inputs. Having the biggest ROII can, raising a nutrient dense crop. 00:00:22 There's a new term that's coming. It, it all kind of means the same thing. But let's get back to nutrient reduction 00:00:28 or nitrogen reduction. To say that we should reduce nitrogen is really an incomplete term. 00:00:34 We are over-applying nitrogen generally relative to the rest of the nutrients. But if we balance our SAP sample, 00:00:42 we are not over applying nitrogen. In theory, you could apply 400 pounds of nitrogen per acre. As long as you balance the sap 00:00:48 and you're assimilating the nitrogen. I would tell you you're not over applying it, you know, along as the yield corresponds. 00:00:53 Mm-hmm. Of course, what the SAP tells us is if we are balancing the nitrogen or assimilating it or not. That's my farmer answer. 00:01:02 So again, nitrogen reduction is an incomplete statement. I would tell you we need to balance 00:01:07 or assimilate 95% of the nitrogen. That's our goal outta the SAP test. Mike can tell you the agronomy behind it. 00:01:14 Yeah. So what we're looking at here is just a slide from one of our presentations. But what we're highlighting here, kind of first off, 00:01:20 is the SAP analysis. You know, here in the black is total nitrogen and we can get that out of a tissue. 00:01:25 And we've gotten that all, all for years doing your tissue samples. When we're trying to complete that statement 00:01:30 or look at the whole picture, we need more information. And this SAP analysis allows us to complete that. 'cause we can measure ammonium nitrate 00:01:39 and our conversion efficiency. And this is just a screenshot of, of a sample we have, um, that does that you get a total end nitrate 00:01:46 ammonium in our efficiency. And we can go through this, but conversion efficiency is gold. Standard would be 95%. This is running a little bit below. 00:01:55 And you can see it's deficient by the way the bar is set, you know, negative 34%, it's red, it's deficient. 00:02:01 The plant is re in the end 'cause it is not getting enough outta the soil. The other issue we have is up here we can look at what 00:02:07 between ammonium and nitrate, what's what's not getting assimilated. And, and we need to look at that so we can understand 00:02:16 our bottlenecks, what's dysfunctional in the plant and how to correct that to be more efficient. So we don't need to apply as more, more on, 00:02:24 because if we went to this field and saw what this is what this is telling us report and visually saw it, we'd see firing up from the bottom. 00:02:30 This is when later in the season, you know, August 1st, the bottom of your plant gets yellow. That's because the new growth 00:02:37 is stealing from the old growth. Yes. Even though, even though we have a decent conversion here, a decent efficiency 00:02:43 or a simulation number that doesn't tell the whole story. So what Mike's trying to tell you, 00:02:47 the new growth is stealing from the old growth. You are not getting it outta the root system. We need to have more, uh, soil available nitrogen, 00:02:54 maybe a better root system, things like that to get this old number back up there to have that green plant top to bottom. 00:03:00 But the other side of it is this whole process that you see around here. But the, here's, here's a great example of what we need 00:03:07 to be doing in the plant at the root tip to process that nitrogen. There's nitrate NO three ammonium NO four. 00:03:14 Well, in that process, nitrate needs to convert to nitrite, to ammonium to go through the go gat pathway, 00:03:20 which is basically turned into glutamine, glutamate, amino acids, proteins. 'cause at the end of the day, when we're putting nitrogen in 00:03:27 a plant, it needs to turn to a protein. And if we can't complete that cycle, we are being inefficient. And 00:03:32 The reason we can't complete that cycle is because we have the over application of nitrogen. We don't have enough of these nutrients down here 00:03:40 to help the plant take the nitrogen and produce the proteins and the amino acids at the end of the day. 00:03:45 Yeah. That's the farmer answer. Yeah. And that kind of gets right here with this nitrate. If there are any, uh, adequate amount of carbohydrates 00:03:53 and carbon there to complete that cycle, the plant will will store it and store it in the vacuum of the cell. 00:03:59 That creates the bigger cell. It gets elongated. E elongation means thinner cells, thinner cells, more susceptible to disease bug infestations. 00:04:08 A less healthy plant, less Healthy plant. Probably a lower brick score. Yes. You know what I Mean? Right. 00:04:12 So Mike loves to use these SAP samples for some higher level agronomy to really dial it in. As a farmer, I love these to really dial it in 00:04:20 because I don't wanna waste a single nutrient. I wanna spend as little money as possible and I want to, uh, have the biggest ROI possible this helps. 00:04:29 There's no wasting of nutrients. You know, like this total nitrogen, we can get this off a tissue test. 00:04:34 You know, how many times over the past five to 10 years I've heard Well, at a V 12 or whatever it is, if the nitrogen is 4% in the tissue 00:04:42 sample, you can raise four oh oh bushel corn hogwash. It's hogwash. This is incomplete data. This is what we need. The SAP test gives us detailed enough information 00:04:52 that we can calibrate a product. If the product doesn't move the needle, we don't use the product. 00:04:56 Again. It's that simple. Yep. And we keep a database of that because again, I wanna spend as little money as possible. 00:05:01 Yeah. And I think to, to highlight the other side of it is everybody thinks just put nitrogen that's gonna go to the plant, it's gonna get you yield. 00:05:08 Well this whole pathway here kinda explains the nut, the, the supporting nutrients you need in place. 00:05:14 Insufficient in numbers. Sufficient is key that can complete this. And if you start here with nitrate, 00:05:20 if you don't have the right moly, sulfur and iron available in the plant at the root to process that, we get that issue. 00:05:27 And then it cascades down through the plant on healthy plant. Amon, this is urea converted into ammonium. 00:05:34 But from ammonium to amino acids, we need manganese, magnesium. And if we wanna convert amino acids to proteins, 00:05:41 phosphate sulfur, magnesium, there's a slew of 'em here that we need for the plant. So it's beyond nitrogen. 00:05:48 There's this whole secondary pool of nutrients we need to support it. You wanna talk about a stress mitigation, uh, factor here 00:05:55 that we can measure for every excess nitrate molecule that goes into the plant and becomes excess growth takes three water molecules to service that. 00:06:03 So all of this nitrogen that we're wasting by the over application of nitrogen means the plant needs more water. 00:06:09 You wanna talk about in a drought year or when you're irrigating the extra expense that that takes, there's more wasted money right there. 00:06:15 And another fact on nitrate is it takes the plant to process nitrate to 16% of its photosynth en energy to process nitrate above ammonium. So 00:06:25 Takes more energy to process nitrate versus ammonium. The Point is it's a more energy, more demanding, uh, 00:06:32 molecule to handle in the plant. This is the reason that Evans and I really love the SAP test. 00:06:36 This is the reason we use it. This is the science behind it. If you have any questions, reach out. 00:06:41 But this gives us so much better information to dial in, 00:06:45.155 --> 00:06:46.885