This is the sugar beet report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Like most crops, sugar beets perform better with nitrogen present, but there are sources of urea that can cause nitrogen loss. Daniel Kaiser, University of Minnesota Extension soil scientist, recently completed a three year study on this topic. Daniel, what was your main focus with the study on nitrogen loss?

So the big thing that I was really looking at with this particular study, if we look at some of the urea sources, was just to give me an indicator of what potentially to look at because there's so many options out there. I think that's the challenges for growers to kind of wade through what's out there and what's best for them. We had two separate trials, one looking at just rates of urea fall versus spring, then another one where we looked at sources where we had inhibitors like AgriTain, Instinct. We had, the coated products ESN, SuperU, which is, that is AgriTain at a lower rate plus DCD, just some different options to look at different pathways for nitrogen loss. So I think that was kind of the key thing that I wanted to do and do that over about a three year period in both the northern and the southern growing regions.

Do you have any findings or conclusions based on the study?

So, you know, one of the key things, just looking at the data, the Southern data was pretty clear in terms of time of application that we were seeing, you know, much greater tonnages with the spring application in that it took less nitrogen. In the North, you know, interesting enough, it was kind of a mixed bag. There were actually a couple years at Crookston where the the fall application actually did better, in terms of tonnage. You know, two of the years fall was better. One of the year their years they were the same. Then this last year, actually, we had a wetter spring, actually the spring was better. So it's all dependent on moisture. That's really, I think the key with a lot of this. And there's some questions I think we could be addressing here in the future with research from this, just just based on some of these findings within the last couple years.

At this point, Daniel, do you have any recommendations?

I've had some, you know, consultants ask about, you know, what I would potentially recommend for, you know, particular products. Maybe looking at straight urea, looking at something like a full rate of Aggrutane or Anvol, which are both urease inhibitors, and something like that one third, two third ESN blend at full rates of nitrogen, because that's really what we need. These nitrification inhibitors, it just doesn't seem like it's the best option right now to give you the longevity of these particular sources. That's, I think the thing that needs to be followed up on. The other thing that has been a big interest has been with spring application of urea to the growers has been this stand loss issue. In the spring, you may want to keep the rates a little bit lower, particularly of urea. One of the things that I'd really have liked to have seen, although we never did see it is whether or not if we could slow down some of the the formation of ammonia which I think is really what's the big thing for most sugar beet growers. What's probably causing some of the issues. If we could slow that down with some of these inhibitors like a urease inhibitor, could we counteract some of these these issues, you know, potentially what we're seeing with decreased stand? You know, the main thing though that I will save to most of the growers is that I am not as concerned about it because even with a lot of the loss in stand that we saw, we never really saw a decrease in recoverable sucrose or in root yield. But I think some growers on some really coarse sands, there there could be some some bigger issues with it.

Thanks, Daniel. Our guest has been Daniel Kaiser, University of Minnesota Extension soil scientist. This has been the sugar beet report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.