Fixing Nitrogen with Stabilizers & Biologicals

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Stabilizing applied nitrogen in the soil will help keep the nutrient in the soil during fluctuating weather events.

Every farmer understands that nitrogen is an essential nutrient for crop growth. Applications of N can substantially increase yield and allows more food to be grown on fewer acres. However, when more fertilizer is applied than can be used by the crop, nitrogen can be lost to the environment via denitrification, leaching and volatilization. Preventing nitrogen loss by limiting excess nitrogen fertilizer applications is both environmentally and economically beneficial.

How Can We Fix and Protect Applied Nitrogen?

Nitrogen stabilizers are critical for protecting the investment we have made in fertilizer. Most synthetic fertilizers contain nitrogen as ammonium (NH4+) or a form of nitrogen that will be converted to ammonium. This is ideal because ammonium is easy for the crop to uptake, however, bacteria in the soil rapidly covert ammonium to nitrate (NO3-) which is also available for plant uptake but can easily be lost to leaching or denitrification. Nitrification inhibitors keep the applied nitrogen fertilizer in the ammonium form longer, preventing nitrogen from being lost to the environment and ensuring it is available for crop uptake. Nitrogen fertilizer that contains urea can also be lost to the environment via volatilization. Regardless of whether the urea is incorporated, urease inhibitors are needed to keep the nitrogen in the soil and available for crops. Split applications of nitrogen are another crucial management step that prevents nitrogen loss and increases its availability for crop growth. By splitting nitrogen fertilizer into multiple applications, we can limit the amount time the nitrogen is in the field and can be lost via denitrification, leaching and volatilization and deliver the fertilizer closer to the time when the crop will use it.

Biological Nitrogen

New products are emerging to help growers managing nitrogen by adding a biological source of nitrogen. These products generally include the application of living bacteria to the crop that can fix atmospheric nitrogen and provide a small amount of nitrogen to the crop throughout the growing season. The bacteria in these products differ but all work similarly to the rhizobia bacteria that fixes atmospheric nitrogen in legume crops. Envita™ and Utrisha™ N are two options offered through the GROWMARK/FS System. Envita™ colonizes within the plant cell and utilizes cellular energy while

Utrisha™ N enters through plant stomata and colonizes within leaf cells and lives off carbon byproducts.

Regardless of where the bacteria live and what they eat, they serve the same purpose -to fix atmospheric nitrogen and provide a small amount of useable nitrogen to the crop throughout the growing season. Unlike competitive products, the nitrogen fixing bacteria in Enivta™ and Utrisha™ N live on or in the crop, which means they will not be affected by low soil moisture conditions when soil nitrogen becomes unavailable.

Table 1. Biological Nitrogen Products