In-season nutrient deficiencies can lead to lower yields. Recognizing the signs of common in-season nutrient deficiencies can help you make a plan to address them and protect yield potential for future seasons.
Scout for the Signs
Recognizing the signs of a nutrient deficiency begins with scouting throughout the growing season. As you head out to the fields to scout, find the high point and look across the field as a whole, starting with areas where coloring looks lighter or plants look shorter.
As you assess problematic areas in a field, examine the entire plant starting from the ground up, looking for visual signs of common nutrient deficiencies.
Soil and Tissue Test
While recognizing the visual signs of deficiency is often the first step in identifying the problem, it is important to know that similarities exist between how various nutrient deficiencies impact plant tissue color and appearance. Soil and tissue testing can provide additional information that can help properly diagnose and correct nutrient deficiencies.
Address Deficiencies and Plan for the Future
Once it is understood which nutrients are missing, steps can be taken to improve nutrient availability in the soil. In some cases, it may be too late to address a deficiency in the current growing season. However, it is important to remember this deficiency and make plans to address it in the following growing seasons. Choosing performance fertilizers, like MicroEssentials® and Aspire®, helps ensure plants get the right amount of nutrients at the right time.
Biologicals are another tool that can be used to help prevent nutrient deficiencies. When added to fertilizer applications, Bio Crop Nutrition products like BioPath® or PowerCoat® activate the connection between microbes and nutrients in the soil for greater nutrient use efficiency. These technologies are formulated with select, highly effective strains of spore-forming Bacillus bacteria that colonize in and around developing crop roots in the rhizosphere and produce organic acids and enzymes to improve availability, uptake and utilization of nutrients, reducing the likelihood of a nutrient deficiency while also increasing yield potential and return on fertilizer investment (ROFI).
