Roots – Are They What You Expected?

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Published September 18, 2008 | By admin

 

Agronomist Mike Petersen is Digging This Month (Sept.) to Gain Answers

 

Final root pits are being dug for the 2008 crop. With a cooler than normal August and decent rain events corn fields in Western Corn Belt where we at Orthman are in the fields checking, the root profiles are significantly less than warmer years of the past 8 years. With corn being very dependant on how the soil profile warms and how deep that warming front goes down into the soil, we are seeing root profiles no more than 4 foot in many regions of the west. What does that have to relate to the final product, yield? Did the roots access all the necessary water and nutrients from earlier rains that leached a portion of the N downward? That may be the case.

 

Our agronomist at Orthman Manufacturing and Mark Griffith are examining pits as we write to determine what happened in this year of cool and wet.

 

We’ll keep you posted the outcome.

 

 

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