15 ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER FEBRUARY 2024 This research project received funding from Grain Farmers of Ontario. acre over the ‘control’ at 56.8 bushels/acre within the longer maturity variety that we added in this year,” says Rundle, a corn product placement scientist with Syngenta Canada. “However, it was out-performed by a number of other treatments, including all three of our standard varieties with the ‘everything’ package.” He concedes the results may not correlate to a set of agronomic practices that could translate to increased yields and revenues. But it is the physiological work that creates knowledge to build on for future practices or products being brought to market that might take advantage of some of the results they’re gleaning from this project. THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION Earl agrees with Rundle’s assessment: growers are more interested in defined practices that drive yield and less about the differences in pod number or seed size resulting from different fertilizer treatments. “We have especially good statistical power to compare the ‘everything’ to the ‘nothing’ treatments because we have 12 estimates of each at each location,” says Earl, associate professor of crop physiology at the University of Guelph. “The contrast is significant at every location except Maryhill (in) 2022. As it turns out, looking at the input packages, the three varieties have statistically the same yield if you grew them without any of these inputs — then they all increase by about the same amount.” He adds that each location is analyzed separately, so the least significant differences are location-specific. That way, a five bushel increase from foliar nitrogen was significant at Elora in 2021, but larger increases were not significant at Maryhill or Woodstock in 2022. TAKE HOME MESSAGE Despite the preliminary nature of the data, the lesson to be carried forward from Earl’s perspective is that if a grower’s getting very high yields, it’s likely because they’re on good soil and saw good weather during a growing season. “It’s almost like it’s an innate property of your farm,” he says. “Some growers on Class 2 and 3 soils will say the soil is a lot better than it was when they got it, so through proper management, you can increase the soil productivity. But that’s a long-term prospect.” This project is funded in part by the Canadian Agriculture Partnership (CAP), a five-year investment by Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments.• HORST BOHNER, OMAFRA
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