John Kempf argues that fertilizer cuts create an opening to use microbial inoculants. The first 10-14 days after germination are critical for microbiome establishment, but concentrated fertilizer applications later can destroy it. Spreading fertilizer instead of concentrating it lets biologicals like Biokote Gold sustain root development and yield.
Questions this video answers
About 10–14 days after germination (first two weeks).
Often 6–10 weeks after infection (disease expression commonly occurs during later high nutrient-demand periods such as grain/fruit fill).
Biokote Gold.
Chapters
In the current very challenging economic conditions, a lot of growers are considering putting on less fertilizer applications. And this is perhaps the best opportunity I've seen in my lifetime. This is a golden opportunity to really take advantage of the use of microbial inoculants and biologicals. Because when we reduce fertilizer applications, that is actually the ideal environment. It's the very best environment for microbes to express themselves and to deliver a lot of nutrients to the crop. So every year there's all these social media posts and all of the outrage that goes with it about growers or agronomists, salespeople collecting photos of young seedlings that are a couple of weeks past the germination stage, showing distinct differences in root size and root biomass, and pointing out that hey, this biological inoculant or this biostimulant produced a larger root system. But then at the final harvest, in far too many of those instances where there are distinct differences in root biomass size at the beginning, there aren't necessarily significant yield differences. Sometimes there are, but it's certainly there's not a. There's not. You couldn't infer that just simply because you have strong root biomass that you can expect to have higher yield. And the reason there's a discrepancy between those two is what happens in between. What happens from the moment we have a large rip biomass at a seedling stage until final harvest is usually there are additional fertilizer applications. There might be nitrogen cypress applications or the root system expands to really begin tapping into the fertilizer that was applied at planting perhaps deeper down in the strip for whatever reason. Usually what happens, or shouldn't say usually, but what can happen is that what appears to be a very robust root system that is colonized by microbes reaches a band of nutrient rich zone where fertilizer has been applied and that microbial colonization collapses and the root system development doesn't continue to keep pace with what it was previously compared to an untreated control or compared to a treatment that didn't have the microbial inoculant. So it's in this type of environment. I've written several articles about how critical the first two weeks of microbiome establishment are for a disease resistant root system and a very large robust root system. In short, immediately after a seed germinates for but there's about a two week window when we have rapidly emerging root radicals and very rapid root growth provided the seed has enough energy. And it is often in that first two week window if that root radical and that rapidly growing root system isn't colonized by healthy microorganisms and we don't get the establishment of a healthy microbiome. It's often in that first 10 to 14 day window that potentially pathogenic organisms first become established and first penetrate the root system. So it's very common to have Fazarium or anthracnose or Verticillium or Pythium first begin infecting a root system 10 to 14 days after germination. But then you might not see the effects, you might not see the actual expression of disease for another six to eight to 10 weeks. In many cases you get actual disease expression occurring when the plant comes under heavy nutrient load. And this is often during the grain filled period or during the fruit filled period, when there's a lot of energy requirements, a lot of nutrient requirements. It's at that point that this organism first begins expressing itself as a pathogen, even though the infection happened weeks earlier, right after germination. So it is in this context. So when we're in an environment where if you are considering using fewer fertilizers and considering reducing nitrogen applications or phosphorus applications, that is the very best environment. It's the very best opportunity to have seed treatments or microbial inoculants like Biokote Gold have the biggest possible influence because now they are not short circuited and they're not hampered by encountering those large applications of soluble nutrients later in the growing season. And it's in those contexts consistently where we see the greatest yield responses and where there is a correlation between those large root systems weeks after establishment and the actual final yield is when we don't have that system being interrupted by the applications of large amounts of side dress concentrated in the root zone. And by the way, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't do side dress or that we shouldn't do fertilizer applications. We should do them as they are needed. As the plant is telling us that it has these nutrient requirements and they should be dispersed in such a way that distributed and not concentrated in such a way that they don't interrupt that microbiome. That is how you get an exceptional yield response from the combination of biologicals and nutrient applications. The reality is, once we start working with microbial inoculants and want to build large robust root systems, we should be thinking about our side dress applications and our fertilizer applications in terms of positioning them in such a way that the plant benefits, but that we don't disrupt the microbiome that's the foundation. So this, this coming spring season, I think for, for many will be the golden opportunity to try a microbial inoculant like biocoat gold, because they can expect to get bigger responses than they might otherwise have received when they are reducing fertilizer applications.
