Improving Nitrogen Use Efficiency With Urea Sustain
Tell us about your role and what you do as Field Research Manager at CSBP?
Each season CSBP conducts around 45 field trials looking at a range of nutritional topics over several crop and pasture types. Growers don’t have time to do multi-treatment replicated trials, but we have the resources to do this research on their behalf.
Our main objective is to help drive growers’ production sustainably and profitably. If we can help improve their fertiliser use efficiency, then more of the nutrients they apply will end up in the crop.
My role is to work closely with our account managers, agronomists and field research team to design and manage relevant trials. These will hopefully lead to positive changes in the way farmers approach soil and plant nutrition.
What’s currently happening with our trials program?
CSBP is investing in a number of different topics in 2022, under the categories of placement, timing, rates and products. Nitrogen and potassium continue to be hot topics among growers who are keen to improve crop yields by tweaking how these nutrients are applied. We have a large nitrogen hub at Three Springs and a potassium hub at York.
What are you doing to improve nitrogen use efficiency for growers?
Nitrogen continues to be a major driver of crop production and in the current environment of global volatility, nitrogen use efficiency has never been more important. We continue to see the benefits and efficiencies of banding Flexi-N compared to top dressing urea.
Further to this, our trials are showing the higher rates of banded Flexi-N at seeding are our best-performing treatments. The exception to this has been leaching environments along the South Coast of WA. We will continue to explore rates, timing and placement strategies to increase our knowledge in this space as new technologies become available.
Tell us why CSBP developed CSBP Urea Sustain.
Our new product, Urea Sustain, has been developed to help farmers improve their nitrogen use efficiency when applying urea. With a higher nitrogen use efficiency, less urea delivers the same result and there is a lower risk of nitrogen loss to the environment.
How will CSBP Urea Sustain improve nitrogen use efficiency for growers?
Urea Sustain contains a unique formulation that targets multiple nitrogen loss pathways — volatilisation, denitrification and leaching — with one application. When urea is applied to soil it starts to convert into different forms of nitrogen and depending on the environment, there is a risk nitrogen can be lost to the atmosphere.
Urea Sustain inhibits the activity of the soil enzyme urease, reducing nitrogen loss into the atmosphere. It also contains an ingredient that inhibits the activity of nitrifying bacteria in the soil. This slows the conversion of ammonium to nitrate which ultimately reduces leaching.
What results are you seeing at the Three Springs trial hub?
We have a nitrogen trial hub in Three Springs where we are investigating three related topics in the one paddock:
Managing stubble and nitrogen inputs.
Urease and nitrification inhibitors.
We are already seeing very positive results from side-by-side visual comparisons of Urea Sustain versus untreated urea applied at the same rate.
What do you enjoy most about your job at CSBP?
I really enjoy speaking to growers about the research we’re conducting and the genuine interest they have in our trials. Growers face new challenges each season, particularly involving farm inputs and how they are managing to remain profitable and sustainable.
These challenges are only going to increase and CSBP plays a vital role in helping growers to navigate these topics. As partners, we have a vested interest in our customers remaining profitable for many years to come!
Since graduating from UWA in 1995 Justin has had several roles in the Agriculture industry mainly focusing on agronomy, research and product development.
Justin has been with CSBP for 10 years as our Product Manager and in more recent years as our Field Research Manager.
Justin has a wide range of experience in Agriculture and is passionate about developing new products and services to help growers increase their efficiencies.
