Sensor-based Fertigation Management Research Boosts Efficiency, Profitability

Mar 20, 2023

For the past four years, University of Nebraska–Lincoln researchers have studied the prospects for using sensor-based fertigation management, or SBFM, to increase the efficiency and profitability of nitrogen use. The latest results are now in from multiple Nebraska sites, and they show that the technology enables major gains in both regards.

“This method allows the sensors and imagery to detect what that crop needs, so that you’re not overapplying nitrogen,” said Taylor Cross, a graduate research assistant who oversaw the project last year. “You’ll really see a lot of nitrogen savings with this method.”

For the project, drones provided weekly updates on crop-condition data by using multispectral imagery that showed nitrogen levels. Analysis of the data via N-Time software then directed specific applications of liquid fertilizer by irrigation equipment in a set of eastern Nebraska cornfields.

At all three on-farm test sites in 2022, the approach produced greater efficiency in nitrogen use than did conventional management, with efficiency measured in pounds of nitrogen per bushel of grain. The two SBFM-recommended approaches produced about 44 pounds more grain per pound of nitrogen than did the growers’ traditional method. The two SBFM-recommended methods also showed the potential for boosting profitability. The increases ranged from $28 per acre to just over $40 per acre, on average, across the three sites.

Source : unl.edu

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids