In recent years, products have been available to target the microbes in the soil that impact the nitrogen fixation and the nodulation process in soybeans. Pivot Bio senior director of commercial operations Mark Reisinger says a similar option is now for corn. “Instead of developing a plant to fix its own nitrogen, we looked at the microbiome to see if there is a microbe that would provide that and what we found is there are about six microbes that will provide that to the plant.” When that first root of the corn plant grows downward, the microbe will colonize. “The microbes eat those sugars and carbons and the byproduct is ammonia. We see between V5 and R4, between 25-and-40 pounds of synthetic equivalent nitrogen being provided to the plant on a daily basis.” Reisinger says farmers are looking for new ways to feed their crop, especially in a wet year like we’ve had with lost nitrogen.
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