MSU Scientists on Nationwide Team to Digitize Crop Nutrient Management

Apr 15, 2024

As planting season begins, farmers are testing their soil to determine the nutrients needed to grow their crop. Mississippi State scientists and colleagues from nearly 50 universities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, non-profit organizations and industry partners released a new tool to help decipher the nutrients needed.

Vaughn Reed and Jagmandeep Dhillon, plant and soil sciences assistant professors and scientists in the university’s Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, are members of the national team that built the Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool, or FRST.

The decision-aid tool provides an unbiased, science-based interpretation of phosphorus and potassium values in soil tests across 40 states and Puerto Rico.

“Soil testing and protocols as well as nutrient recommendations vary by state while the acres of an individual farm may cross state lines,” Reed said. “FRST was developed in response to the pressing need to harmonize soil testing across state boundaries. It represents an improvement in our ability to evaluate soil test correlation.”

Crop specific fertilizer recommendations based on soil tests have a long shelf life, generally only updated every 20 years. FRST is the first national database to archive soil test correlation providing a baseline of data and ensuring the information is not lost as scientists retire, Reed added.

FRST currently stores phosphorus and potassium information, two of the big three in crop fertilization, with nitrogen completing the trio. Phosphorus is a building block of DNA and RNA and helps with root development, increases resistance to disease and contributes to flower development. Potassium controls water regulation and helps plants respond to stress.

The new tool represents a significant advancement in soil testing for phosphorus and potassium and nutrient management that uses data from across the U.S. Researchers hope the tool’s precise soil test calibration might one day contribute to significant annual savings for farmers across the country while also reducing excess nutrient losses to the environment.

“We believe that FRST will not only benefit farmers by improving farm economics and conservation practices but also contribute to global sustainability," Jagmandeep Dhillon said.

While the tool is primarily for researchers, farmers will also benefit by comparing results from the tool to their specific nutrient recommendations.

Nathan Slaton, soil science researcher at the University of Arkansas and a leader on the project said the tool helps anyone interested in calibrating traditional soil tests.

“Anyone can use this web-based tool to check their soil-test-based fertilizer recommendations against the FRST research results relevant to their crop, soils and geographic area.”

The current version of FRST includes data from nearly 2,500 phosphorus and potassium trials for 21 major agricultural crops. In the next phase, FRST will provide research-based phosphorus or potassium rate response information to assist farmers in selecting the minimum fertilizer rate expected to produce maximal crop yield.

Funding for the FRST project has been provided by the USDA-NRCS including the Conservation Innovation Grants, USDA-ARS, USDA-NIFA and OCP North America.

Source : msstate.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”