buckhunter10
Well-Known Member
Another great webinar from Dr. Christine Jones - below are my notes. I hope some find this useful! Enjoy!
•Nitrogen - highly mobile in soil10-40% is taken up by plants
•60-90% goes elsewhere
•Nitrogen rapidly transformed does not accumulate, like phosphorus – volatilizes
•78% of the atmosphere is N2
•70million lbs per acre in N2 available
•N2 is inert
•Legumes don’t fix nitrogen - they symbiotically work with bacteria to fix nitrogen.
•Nitrogen fixation occurred insides rhizosheaths and water-stable aggregates – need to have functioning soil to make nitrogen available.
•Observation analysis will be far more important to see soil building than sending soil to a lab – this seems to be very consistent with various other soil scientists as well.
•Synthetic fertilizers - inhibit rhizosheaths and water-stable aggregates.
•A little bit can be stimulatory. Over 50lb per acre is too much (urea for example).
•Clean white roots - no rhizosheaths happening no natural nitrogen fixation occur.
•Every green living plant has some possibility to access free-living nitrogen through microbial intermediaries, through the fungal network.
•Fungi are the conduits transport of organic nitrogen to plant roots, as amino acids. Once inside the plant, the plant can assemble the amino acids into proteins. This is important, some syntetics might get taken up by the plant but are not converted to proteins, therefore are consumed as nitrates.
•Huge metabolic cost to plant to convert synthetic nitrogen to usable protein. So it at times doesn’t convert, again leaving the amount a N in the plant vs. a protein, which is not helping the nutrient density of the plant for consumption.
•80-90% of plant nutrient acquisition is microbially mediated.
•Dissimilar microbiomes - growing together- function symbiotically vs. competitively.
•High analysis fertilizers are just substituting for plant diversity.
•800lbs of urea per acre - cannot produce the same biomass as 4+ groups of complimentary plants working together.
•Wean off N if needed - 20%,30%,50% - use an organic form of N fertilizer vs. urea, as an example.
•Can use 5lb per acre of synthetic N - without detrimental impacts.Not sure why this occurs but it does act as a jump start or stimulant for the microbiomes.
•Use plant leaf tests and apply as foliar - only if they needed.
•Funny protein - is if a plant has N in the plant but the protein was never converted, yet the lab tests can be inconsistent. Labs test for N in the plant and then multiply it by a fixed number variable. This test is inconsistent as it assumes all N is converted to a protein. However, this is not the case as many synthetics are never converted and stay as N.
•4 functional groups without a legume will fix as much N - as with a legume. Too many legumes can be detrimental, like synthetics.
•More than half the N in manure is inorganic
•Avoid inorganic N all together
•If you put nitrogen fertilizer on a legume - the bacteria that fix nitrogen will stop.
•Synthetics make plants look good but they are weak below. Not nutrient-dense.
•4 plant functional groups - incredibly healthy microbiome.
