Do Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizers Improve Canadian Western Red Spring Wheat Yield and Protein?

Research overview

Modern agriculture is heavily dependant on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to deliver the yields needed to feed an ever-growing population. Nitrogen fertilizers are susceptible to loss and mitigating these are important from an economical and environmental standpoint. Enhanced efficiency fertilizers have been developed to reduce these losses and provide more nitrogen to the crop. We have created a study to determine if these enhanced efficiency fertilizers are capable of delivering improved grain yield and protein content in Canadian Western Red Spring Wheat. In this study there are two experiments. Experiment I involves six nitrogen fertilizers being side-banded at planting of one CWRS cultivar. Experiment II looks at using five fertilizers that are either all side-banded, or split applied between side-banding and broadcasting at two different growth stages of two CWRS cultivars. Grain yield and protein content were collected from the harvested grain and used for analysis. Preliminary results show no large difference between nitrogen forms in both experiments. Experiment I showed grain yield increasing until 120kg/ha of N were applied, after which additional N seemed to plateau yield. Grain protein content increased with an increase in N rate up to 240kg/ha. In experiment II, timing of N application showed higher yields and protein content with fewer split applications in both cultivars. Based on the generalized results discussed here, enhanced efficiency fertilizers are not observed to provide an improved grain yield or protein response in CWRS wheat relative to the conventional method of applying urea all at planting.

***Disclaimer***

This website and associated presentation were made by Adam Fast for RENR580. The data used in this project is from a study led by Dr. Brian Beres entitled "Integrating N fertilizer technologies with superior genetics to optimize protein in CWRS wheat without compromising yield, 4R principles, and environmental health" occurring from 2019-2023. I am using some of this study as the basis for my M.Sc. thesis at the University of Alberta under the co-supervision of Dr. Brian Beres and Dr. Dean Spaner. The data presented here is from 2019 and 2020.