Research Objective

• Evaluate different methods (surface broadcast, shallow banding, deep banding) of applying nitrogen fertilizer in one-pass seeding operations on canola yield and agronomic nitrogen use efficiency
• Look at the effects on canola yield and fertilizer N loss with surface applications of urea in the fall and if Agrotrain® or SuperU® can decrease these losses
• Determine nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from urea and SuperU® products when used in the spring
• Determine the overall N2O emissions and amount produced per unit of canola over the season with each of the different application methods of urea or SuperU®

Project Description

Surface applications of N fertilizer or manure increase the risk that gaseous nitrogen can be lost and turned into volatile NH3. Deep banding is a superior technique to combat this because the gaseous NH3 gets interconverted to NH4+ instead and will stay in the soil. But deep banding requires more horsepower and field operation time, so this study proposes to find a commercially available fertilizer and shallow band to determine if this combination will still provide adequate protection against volatilization and N2O loss while accelerating field operations.