When it comes to maximizing your yield potential and Return on Fertilizer Investment (ROFI), crop nutrition is nearly everything. In fact, up to 60% of yield potential is dependent on crop nutrition and just 17 key nutrients are needed to help a crop grow.
This is where Mulder’s Chart — a simple yet powerful tool that helps agriculturalists understand how nutrients interact in the soil — comes in.
What is Mulder’s Chart?
Mulder’s Chart is a guide that shows how different nutrients affect each other, thus affecting growing crops. It includes macronutrients like nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), as well as secondary nutrients and micronutrients like calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), zinc (Zn), iron (Fe) and more.
The chart maps out nutrients’ synergistic and antagonistic relationships with each other. What’s important to understand is the balance of these nutrients — too much of one may impact its relationship with another. Synergy means one nutrient helps the plant take up another. Antagonism means one nutrient blocks or reduces the uptake of another. Both types of interactions can make or break your crop’s performance.
Using Mulder’s Chart in the field
- Soil Testing – Examine soil tests to see what nutrients are present and at what levels.
- Interpret Interactions – Use Mulder’s Chart to assess how the levels of one nutrient may affect others.
- Adjust Fertilizer Plans – Apply fertilizers based not just on deficiencies, but also on how nutrients influence each other.
- Monitor and Adapt – Retest soil periodically and adjust your nutrient strategy as needed.
Why Balanced Crop Nutrition matters?
Mulder’s Chart is a perfect example of why more isn’t always better. For example, adding too much potassium can block magnesium uptake, leading to magnesium deficiency —even if magnesium levels in the soil are adequate. Similarly, too much nitrogen can interfere with the uptake of copper and zinc.
Balanced Crop Nutrition ensures that no nutrient is under- or oversupplied. When all essential nutrients are available in the right amounts and ratios, nutrient utilization, as well as plant growth and vigor, are increased, maximizing yield potential and ROFI.
Learn more about why balanced crop nutrition matters and how nutrient balances and imbalances can impact your yield potential with Dr. Tryston Beyrer, Crop Nutrition Lead.