Nitrogen mismanagement results in increased disease and insect susceptibility, lodging, reduced protein content, degraded soil microbial communities, and reduced yield. Excessive nitrogen applied at the wrong time causes all sorts of nutritional imbalances, and nitrogen is one of the two nutrients most commonly applied in excess, which results in many common storage, quality, and insect susceptibility problems.

Soil biology can deliver most of a crop’s nitrogen requirements. In fact, it can deliver 100% of N requirements when commercial N applications are managed to work in synergy with the soil microbial community instead of suppressing it. In this presentation, John Kempf will describe the rhizophagy cycle of nutrient absorption from living microbial cells, how to effectively buffer and stabilize nitrogen in the soil profile so that it remains plant available without being soluble, the changes in plant physiology produced by different forms of nitrogen, and how to most effectively manage nitrogen in biological systems.