Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: Season 2 Kickoff with Dr. Don Huber

Hi friends. Welcome to season two of the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Thanks to all of your support, We've had over 100,000 unique downloads of the show with listeners in 142 countries, which shows us that the regenerative agriculture movement is gaining momentum around the world. And we're very grateful to be a part of this with you. We're excited to bring you the most valuable and actionable information on the topic that we can. It's an honor and a privilege to do this for you. Our goal is to provide you with a podcast that shares inspiring and actionable information. I believe that freely sharing information helps all growers and farmers making a global positive impact on how food is grown. This season, like last, is brought to you by a company I founded, AEA Advancing Eco Agriculture. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops with regenerative agriculture is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to deliver just those results. To deliver those results at aea, we don't guess, we test. We make certain that we measure the exact nutritional profiles of what is happening in plants and soils. Then we provide recommendations based on data and our agronomic understanding of what we've learned from looking at all that data. And we've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money and that have consistently seen positive results in the field. Because AEA produces this show, that means that we do not have to sell ads and we're not beholden to advertisers. This gives me the freedom to host anyone that brings value to the community, even competitors to aea, which I've done in the past, and to gift free promotional space to organizations that help impact the regenerative agriculture movement. You'll notice that this season we're airing short messages from organizations that are doing great work in the sphere of regenerative agriculture and food. Part awareness spreading, part thank you, part community impact service, we realize that this show is a great platform to offer a wide audience to folks that we want to support. We hope that you'll check them out and get involved and support them as well. The first community impact spot we are featuring is for Seth Godin's new online workshop, the Business of Food. Seth Godin is a world renowned author of 18 best selling books and an entrepreneur who has built multiple widely successful online courses and in this one he is exploring the food chain from farm to table. This course will be of special interest to growers who market directly to consumers, chefs and other food entrepreneurs. The last day to sign up is February 20th, so be sure to check it out today. Here it is, our first community impact spot from Seth the work you do matters. Living on the cutting edge, Feeding the rest of us. Thank you. Hey, it's Seth Godin and I'd like to invite you to check out a new seminar with Will Rosenzweig, professor at UC Berkeley. Building on the programs I lead at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, this workshop is strategic and action oriented. It begins with helping you see how the worldwide food infrastructure has evolved, how it's become broken, and where it's going, with special attention to the dynamic opportunities.

Ahead and where you can make a difference.

Find out more by visiting akimbo.com that's a K I M B O. We'd love to have you join us at the Business of Food Workshop. I've personally participated in some of Seth's courses and I can promise you that it will be very inspiring and lead to new ideas and new thoughts that you might otherwise not have considered. This season, the team and I are looking forward to presenting even more interviews with a wide range of growers, agronomists and other researchers and doers. We intend to delve into a number of topics that I'm certain you will find very interesting and that you may not hear very much about elsewhere. To open Season two, I have the pleasure and honor to once again interview amazing Don Hubert. In this episode, Don describes how plants can become resistant to airborne pathogens and insects based on a plant's nutritional integrity and the ability to metabolize nitrogen compounds and reducing versus non reducing sugars. He references the nitrification process and describes how we can reduce nitrogen use with nitrification inhibitors and we can achieve the same results by converting all the applied nitrogen to amino acids. That's it. I hope you enjoy the show. Here is our classic show introduction you might recognize if you listened in season one, followed by a remarkable conversation with Don Hueber that gets very technical and very actionable. Enjoy. Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases in insects, and produce food of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've been fortunate to meet many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems. However, much of this knowledge and information is scattered all over the place. There are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that have not been widely shared. I founded Advancing EcoAgriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agriculture systems become the mainstream globally, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared. To achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. These concepts and principles about regenerative systems can be applied anywhere and when they're properly applied, they will increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or topics of ideas that you would like for me to discuss, please connect on social media or email me johngenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Be sure to sign up for our email list@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Hope you enjoy and thank you for listening.

I'm very honored to be back with Don Huber who we had on the podcast last year for a fascinating interview where we spoke about developing disease suppressive soils and the interactions of minerals and nitrogen and various compounds in producing high quality and high yielding crops that are resistant to disease. We received a lot of really favorable feedback from that conversation and really welcomed your constant input. So I wanted to have Don back to have follow up conversations on other aspects of plant nutrition and plant quality that we didn't have the opportunity to talk about. So Don, welcome back and thank you very much for being here.

It's an honor to be with you, John. Appreciate the opportunity.

Don. We had such a fascinating conversation last time we spoke and a lot of people have come back with additional questions and I think there's a really intriguing conversation that's emerging that growers haven't historically thought about the possibilities of developing disease resistant crops based on how they manage nutrition and cultural management practices. So there's several questions that have emerged and I'm just going to go through these in no particular order. They're from a variety of different topic areas. One of them was we were speaking about photosynthesis and about the quality and the quantity of photosynthesis and how photosynthesis can be increased. And in that conversation you made reference to that a really healthy plant should have no backlog of glucose and fructose levels, but that we want the plant to store sugars as sucrose. Can you elaborate on this a little bit and what this means for plant health?

Well, photosynthesis is the basic system of capturing that sun's energy, we store it as sugar or as protein or as amino acids. And then amino acids are converted to protein with the nitrogen. But 80, 85% of your nitrogen is stored as enzymes, not stored, but in the plant as enzymes. And your storage sugars are carbohydrates. So it's important that you have that energy for the plant from a growth standpoint and also a response standpoint for defense against stresses that may come in, whether they're biotic or abiotic stresses. And anything that compromises photosynthesis is compromising the basic system that we're relying on for growing that plant. And that's our purpose there. So I'm not sure what the concern is on storage. The storage can be in various forms, and then it's metabolized one way or the other as it's needed and depending on the storage capacity. But we start out with the seed. The endosperm in the seed supports the germ, and that's primarily the carbohydrate and storage proteins that support that early seedling development and seedling growth, good for about 25 to 30 days in most seed crops. And if you don't have all of your nutrients pretty much in order in that time period so that machinery can work effectively, the enzymes can work effectively, then there will be often irreversible yield loss, even though you may provide the nutrients later. So it's important to keep the plant really nutrient sufficient from day one of germination and development in order to both capture the sun's energy and store it as sugar, as well as to utilize that sugar and then the protein that can also be stored there later on for the plant or during development.

Are there any negative health consequences of plants having high levels of fructose and glucose?

Yes and no, depending on what other stresses. If you have deficiency of manganese, for instance, it can't store the reducing sugars, glucose and fructose that are being produced through photosynthesis, can't store them as sucrose. And so they become very attractive. The reducing sugars become very attractive for insect pests and also number of our plant pathogens. So it's one of the consequences of that certain nutrient deficiencies, manganese being just one of them. But manganese is a critical factor for that sucrose phosphate synthase enzyme that converts glucose and fructose into sucrose for storage. And so if you're deficient in that and you have high reducing sugars, glucose and fructose, especially in in the system, as an insect, aphids and that fly over, they can detect that high reducing sugar. And it's for them it's kind of a red flag saying hey, come in for dinner. Where if it was converted to sucrose and stored there, you don't see that attraction nearly as much. It's not as leaky from the root system. You'll see it's your reducing sugars that are coming out of the root system that are in the root exudates that are attracting your Pythium and Phytophthora and Phonomyces, those other omicete pathogens, root rotting pathogens that are attracted then through failure of that system or activation of the system through those root exudates.

So in essence what you're describing is that when plants have adequate manganese and other enzyme cofactors to convert the glucose and fructose into sucrose and into reducing sugars, we'd have reduced susceptibility to Phytophthora and to these other soil borne organisms that you're describing.

Right. Many of our pathogens are dormant in the soil. They can be there in very high populations, but as long as they're dormant, they're not going to be in causing any problem for us. And so if you activate those spores and they're usually activated by external nutrient sources, then they wake up and say, hey, it's time for dinner. And they'll be attracted to those red exudates that are coming out of the plant. And of course, when you have a zinc or boron deficiency or that you also have a very leaky root system so that your amino acids and carbohydrates are lost through the root exudates rather than being stored and available for growth and development in that process. For many of our pathogens, the dormancy factor the soil is by bacteria that coat the or grow around the resting structures of the pathogen, whether it's a comet, a spore or a regular spore or no spore, you'll get bacteria that will grow around that and they're metabolizing those nutrients that are leaking out of the dormant spore, dormant fungal or omycete spore, so that the critical level for germination of those is not maintained. We call that process fungus tasis. In other words, it doesn't kill the spore or resting structure, whether it's a scrotia or a spore or whatnot, doesn't kill the fungus, but it keeps it in a dormant state so that it's not a problem for Us and so when you change that balance, then the bacteria and organisms that are responsible for keeping them dormant in that biological control mechanism are no longer attracted to the spore, but are able to develop and be free, living active in the other environment, soil environment, so that they no longer perform their function in fungus stations. They're independent of that kind of synergies, that relationship that develops there. That's the importance of minimizing those stresses, especially nutrient stress on the plant because it changes the root oxidation. You're always going to have some root oxidation and we need that in order to maintain the soil population that it's when you have certain nutrients, especially the reducing sugars, are very attractive to those bacteria and organisms that would normally suppress the growth and development of our pathogens. Then you see the pathogens developing because of that food source that they're attracted to, rather than the other organisms that might be in a close association with the pathogens to suppress it.

Essentially the quality or the integrity of the carbohydrate profile that is being moved out from the root system determines whether bacteria are suppressing potential pathogens or not.

Definitely close relationship there. That's one of the reasons why different crop rotations or crop sequences or cover crop mixes have a major effect on your disease. And stress pressure is because of the both the mineral nutrients, but also then the metabolites that those mineral nutrient support and the plant determine what that nutrient environment is for the soil. If you have a very rich nutrient source and a lot of those metabolite, the organisms that would normally be very suppressed, they may not feel a need to, if we can think of it teleologically, may not feel a need to be dependent on the soil environment as much as being attracted to the source of this new food material that's being released from plant under stress.

Don, you described how the carbohydrate profile can attract aphids. Are there other insects that can be attracted as well by the carbohydrate profile?

You'll see a lot of them are, I don't know that all of them, but many of them recognize the difference between the reducing sugars and they don't seem to see the beer be attracted to the non reducing sugars nearly as much. So you'll see that association when we get the mineral balance and sufficiency levels established for the plant, you'll see all of those problems starting to disappear or be very minor.

In our last conversation we spoke about the capacity of nutritionally sound plants to become resistant to soil borne pathogens and Organisms residing in the soil. We haven't spoken about airborne pathogens such as bacterial and fungal pathogens. How can we develop plants that are resistant to those organisms? Conceptually?

Well, you see the same thing there. Pathogens are looking at the plant. I mean they're attracting is as a food source, nutrient source, and also some of them actually require specific nutrients in order to cause disease. So several of the rust for instance, require an exogenous source of zinc on the leaf, an available source of zinc before the spores will germinate and you get infection. So if you don't have that exudation of those minerals on the leaf, then those pathogens are much less severe because they don't have that specific nutrient resource. Now some of the pathogens can change that nutrient availability. And you'll see a lot of your bacterial pathogens, your black rot and some of those organisms that produce the dira fours, which are essentially chelators to increase the solubility and availability of iron. And you'll see that with those dira fours they're able to actually cause a depletion or a deficiency of available iron in the infection site for plant functions, for your energy relationships and all of that that iron is involved in. And so it's important to maintain the availability for the plant in spite of the severe for production by the pathogen. If we can block that severe for production, you block the disease causing mechanism also for that particular pathogen, particular organism, whether it's black rod or whether it's rust or whatnot in that area.

How do you block the sadira for production?

Well, we do that with some of our antibiotics that we use for bacterial disease control, Whether it's in humans or animals or a plant. When we use those, a lot of those are blocking the sidere for production by the pathogen. You see that with fire blight on apples and pears, your black rot pathogens and pseudomonas anthemonas that produce those sidereal fours. And we block them also nutritionally by compensating for the plant and keeping the plants metabolism and defense reactions fully active so that in spite of what the pathogen is doing and minimizing and reducing the availability, we keep enough active and available for the plant that that doesn't have an effect. The pathogens reduction is compensated for so that it can't compromise the resistance of the plant.

It's my understanding that many bacterial and fungal pathogens require a specific amino acid, or perhaps a general amino acid and carbohydrate profile to be within the plant. And that when we change the amino acid profile. It's possible to change susceptibility or resistance to some of these organisms. And that is one of the mechanisms by which different varieties are resistant or susceptible. Is that a correct understanding? And can you explain that a little bit?

Yes, in part. The early fungicides that we used for apple scab, for instance, didn't have any direct effect on the fungus. Their effect was changing the amino acid profile in the plant so that believe it was asparagine that was no longer.

Available.

Are released into the. On the leaf surface. And that. So the pathogen never had that essential amino acid that it required for establishment and infection. And we see that with a number of amino acids, certain amino acids will increase disease severity, Others will be a very strong inhibition to it. And one of the techniques that I developed early on in my career was amino peptidase profiling, where we could actually identify microorganisms just by their amino acid profile. And when we had very difficult organisms to culture, all we had to do was to run the amino peptidase profile on that particular organism. And with just adding three or four amino acids to a little bit of sugar and some minerals, all of those organisms that we had considered obligated, very fastidious organisms could be grown in a simple, well defined culture media. And I've done that for the rust mildew pathogens as well as many of the human pathogens. Wilfred Lee has five patents for human pathogens just patenting the media for their culture and the laboratory. And I don't know of any organism that we have followed that system on that we haven't been able to culture in the laboratory. So we can do the other studies. It's one of the grant proposals that Bruce Heming and I had submitted to the Florida Citrus foundation so that we could start getting the information on control of HLB or greening disease on citrus. We could never get funding to do that. It doesn't take very much, but fairly straightforward approach. But you'll see that specific amino acids can be very inhibitory. That's one of the things for the rust and the mildews. Most people that have been trying to develop media for those obligate organisms want to make sure they don't leave something out. The problem is they throw everything in the mix except the kitchen sink. And one or two amino acids work every bit as effectively for some of those pathogens, obligate pathogens, and stopping their growth as any of our fungicides. It's very sensitive relationship. So it's not a matter of making sure you have everything there. It's making sure that some of those natural products and metabolites aren't present to support the virulence mechanism of the pathogen. We see that with Fusarium, with a lot of the other pathogens that, that nitrogen metabolism is very critical for them. One of the reasons why you see shading controlling greening diseases because with shading you block photo respiration that provides those nitrogen intermediates than for the pathogen.

Hi friends, I'm going to interrupt the interview here for just a quick announcement about an upcoming event. We'll be back to the show in just a moment. I'll be presenting an all day seminar at the AEA Midwest Grower Meeting in Garden City, Kansas on February 27th with some members of the AEA team for an all day intensive discussion on how to implement regenerative agriculture systems. The things that we've learned about producing the greatest economic crop responses on broad acre crops in the Midwest. If you are nearby, you can find out more information on our website advancingecoag.com events and of course you can find a direct link in the show description without further interruptions. Back to the show.

I think this is a very powerful understanding, Don, that the next step in understanding managing nitrogen metabolism within the plant for disease resistance is understanding a specific enzyme, cofactors that are required to produce the amino acid, the antagonistic amino acids that we need to develop.

Yeah, we, we can look at those nitrogen compounds and go right back, trace your, your physiologic pathways and they'll go back to some minerals and that's how we regulate the availability of those metabolites that are involved in the disease reactions.

Don, a lot of our conversation has been revolving around nitrogen, various nitrogen metabolites. And at the beginning of our conversation you spoke about the importance of, of supplying nitrogen in particular as well as other nutrients right from the germination period, right as the seed germinates. And I think this has been a question that has come up on several occasions is it seems that we're no longer managing nitrogen very effectively. We're not managing nitrogen very effectively at all in our corn production, commercial corn production systems. What's the most effective way to manage nitrogen in a corn management culture?

Well, with nitrogen you have to realize that we lump it all as one element. We call it just nitrogen. But from a plant standpoint, we should probably look at that as two different elements because you have it in two different forms, each of them equally available from a physiologic standpoint, in the plant. But it can either be in the reduced ammonium form or it can be in the oxidized nitrate form so that the pathways for utilizing that nitrogen are quite different. Depending on the form of nitrogen that's available, most plants can utilize either farm equally well. There are some exceptions, blueberries and rice, where nitrate is not utilized efficiently at all. In fact, maybe even toxic. But for most plants, you have the mechanism, the physiologic pathways to utilize either one. Now, nitrate can't be utilized by the plant unless it's reduced back to an amine or an amino form. The reduced form is what the amino acids are made from. So that if you're deficient in molybdenum, Molybdenum is a critical element for that nitrate and nitrite reductase enzyme system that puts the nitrate, nitrogen in an available farm for the plant to use. And without molybdenum, that system just doesn't function. There's no cofactor. So you turn the key off of the engine, the enzyme that systems that make that work on it. So again, we're back to that mineral nutrition being the driving factor. It's the cofactor to get those, those enzymes going and sustain them. So if we have the nutrition, have the minerals available and all of those pathways can work. And the plant pretty well utilizes nitrogen. But when we just talk about nitrogen per se, we often don't identify what that form of nitrogen is that we're talking about. And it can have an all or nothing impact on disease severity for many of our pathogens. So need to recognize those relationships, those factors that are involved, not just from a nitrogen efficiency standpoint, but from a disease and overall health standpoint of the plant. From a stress relationship, what is the.

Best way to manage, and I'm going to use the word nitrogen again, but we could say ammonium or nitrate. What's the best way to manage these nutrients to produce the highest quality and the highest protein content. These are directly involved in producing high test weight protein content and overall quality. How should we think about managing these nutrients, particularly for our grain crops such as wheat and corn?

For wheat and corn, your most efficient source of nitrogen is ammonium. And that's because it takes energy to reduce nitrate. Back to the amine farm are to reduce it to the amine form to combine with the carbohydrates to form the amino acids and the proteins so that it's going to require energy. And as long as the plant is photosynthesizing, probably has adequate energy to Reduce nitrate back. But when you get into the high potential, and for many of these crops, there is very significant impact between the different sources of nitrogen, with the nitrate nitrogen requiring 12 to 16% of all of your sugars that are being produced through photosynthesis. Just to reduce nitrate to the amine form. For enzyme production and physiological function, it doesn't have to do that with the ammonia, so that you already have it in the reduced form. Now, the problem with the ammonia is that that can't be stored in the plant, so that it has to be metabolized as it's taken up. And in a very small plant that can stress it for energy that might be needed for overall growth or for other functions, just in combining with the ammonia to form the glutamine and glutamate and asparagine amino acids that then are translocated throughout the rest of the plant and utilized physiologically. So with excess ammonia or very high ammonia levels at any stage, you may induce the carbohydrate stress. And that's what ammonia toxicity is, is really a depletion of your carbohydrates. As you see that ammonia combined with with the carbohydrate to form those amino acids. And where with nitrate nitrogen, the nitrate can be stored in the plant tissues without becoming actively involved physiologically, so that you don't have that deficiency of your carbohydrates induced by excess ammonia. Now, one of the things that is used to increased nitrogen efficiency are the nitrogen stabilizers, your nitrification inhibitors. And that's in a soil relationship, because nitrification, the oxidation of ammonia to nitrate nitrogen, is biological process in the soil with a couple of bacteria, Nitrosimonas nitrobacter, that convert ammonia to nitrate nitrogen. And it's a nitrate nitrogen that is soluble and also is reducible to the elemental nitrogen and nitrous oxides, where it can be lost in the atmosphere, where ammonia is as a positively charged ion, is attracted to the negatively charged soil particles and relatively stable in the soil. So that you don't see that nitrogen loss with the ammonia like you see with nitrate nitrogen. And the soil when you have either anaerobic conditions, as we see often with continuous no till, you'll see much higher loss of nitrate nitrogen and and no till. And you'll see in a till soil, just because of that anaerobic reduction of nitrogen and then the volatile loss is nitrous oxide. So nitrification inhibitors very effective in stopping that bacterial process of conversion of ammonia nitrate, nitrogen in the soil and we can improve nitrogen efficiency 25, 30% with very effective nitrification inhibitor compounds. It's actually implementing a natural process that we see taking place ecologically when we do that, because all of our climax ecosystem crops, whether it's a hardwood forest or a conifer forest or grass prairie, all of those climax plants reduce root exudates that inhibit nitrification. So what they're doing is they're conserving that limited nitrogen availability that they have under those circumstances, so that they're not leached or denitrified, but available for the plant utilization. Sulfur acidification of the soil. There are a number of ways to do that inhibit nitrification. Those are all become important when we have high nitrate leaching and looking at the form of nitrogen and it's metabolism in the soil as well as its metabolism in the plant.

You must have read my mind. I was just about to ask you about nitrification inhibitors when you began speaking about them. One of the additional questions that comes up when we think about these two different forms of nitrogen how should farmers think about managing urea?

Urea is kind of different system can't be utilized until its ammonia is released. And that usually very easily done. The urea enzyme is one that you can usually or quite often detect even in a sterile soil. So you don't necessarily have to have a living organism. You can have the enzymes from a living organism that will hydrolyze urea. That urease enzyme is fairly stable in the soil and available then to hydrolyze the urea to release the ammonia. Now very important with urea and my research, we found that if you just broadcast urea out on the soil surface and have a little bit of dew, that you can lose 80% of that nitrogen from the urea from when the urease enzyme releases the ammonia, because there's nothing to keep it from volatility. If you have some residue and it can incorporate it a quarter of an inch or half an inch, you can save all of that nitrogen. So it doesn't take very much to capture it. But it's important that it not just sit on the surface of the residue or sit on the surface of the soil without having enough water to move it in or tilling it in, working it in a little bit to prevent its volatility loss. Because the ammonia is very volatile unless it can be combined or attracted to those negative soil particles. There are urease inhibitors and my experience, I never found them very effective because it wasn't just the urea that we were trying to to Manage that biological process, but then you also have your nitrification that takes that ammonia, Then the organisms, different organisms, will convert it to the nitrous oxides, then through to nitrate nitrogen, and then either leaching or denitrification losses can occur. So we needed both a nitrification inhibitor and ureation inhibitor. If we were just going to put it out on the soil surface and not get enough moisture to either irrigate it in or rain rainfall to move that urine into the soil. So ammonia could be utilized. Now, we use urea, a lot of urea. You get 46% nitrogen. So it's a fairly good concentrated source of nitrogen. But we also need to recognize that there can be a high loss to it unless we have a way to capture that ammonia as the urea is hydrolyzed.

Don, if we have a desire to produce a high protein content grain and a high test weight grain, what's the optimal timing of nitrogen applications?

Well, the optimum timing for nitrogen application is anytime that the plant is not sufficiently supplied with that essential nutrient, and there probably isn't any element that'll have a greater impact on yield or protein quality. If you look at the elements individually, protein is a nitrogen compound. So anytime that it's deficient, the primary deficiency periods are going to be in that high yield grain fill period that you see during grain formation for corn or wheat, as you ask. So that's going to be a critical factor for high protein or high quality. And your, your product is to make sure you don't run out of nitrogen late in the season. Now, for sugar beets, they force the grower to run out of nitrogen on sugar beets, which means that you're shutting down some of your photosynthetic potential in that. But that's because nitrate nitrogen interferes with sugar extraction. So looking at the sugar extraction rather than the overall weight or yield potential of the plant for corn and wheat, that grain fill period is very critical to maintain full nutrient nitrogen sufficiency. A lot of situations, that's where your nitrification inhibitors come into play. Our side dressing later application of nitrogen. To make sure that you have nitrogen available for that Greenfield period and to get you past the soil high loss periods that we typically see in the temperate areas here for leaching and denitrification losses of nitrogen during our high soil moisture conditions, there's a direct relationship between the carbon nitrogen ratio in a kernel and yield. If you're into a situation where you have a high carbon nitrogen ratio available, optimum would be somewhere around 9 to 1. From a physiologic standpoint, 9 to 1 would indicate that you've got enough carbon to combine with the nitrogen or enough nitrogen to combine with. If you're a larger ratio than that less nitrogen available, then you're not meeting the biochemical potential of the plant. So you're compromising yield or quality and that relationship.

I remember a conversation that you and I had where you described work that Charles Tsai had done on calculating the biochemical potential and carbon to nitrogen ratios. Are there specific kernel development stages that we should be measuring carbon to nitrogen ratios?

Yes, that'll be in the real critical and milk stage and early dose stage. Getting it there to those tissues at that particular stage of growth because of the lag that's required physiologically to keep all of that functioning in full efficiency.

Don, this has been a wonderful and very insightful conversation. I've enjoyed it tremendously, and I'm sure many growers will as well. Are there any additional thoughts or insights that you would like to share?

Well, we always need to remember that mineral nutrition is an integrated system with the genetics in the environment. And so we talk about individual nutrients primarily under those situations where those nutrients may be limiting in the environment. But remember that the plant is really a remarkable entity. You want to look at it as a factory or as a biochemical process. It's truly remarkable how everything is integrated just such a dynamic degree that it all relates together. And even though we look at individual nutrients and what their specific role is to understand how we can improve that efficiency, we can't usually just take one element and see all of the responses that we would potentially have without also making sure that the other support aspects, activities are also addressed when we find those are deficient.

Great reminder.

Just look at the whole picture in that and make sure that we're meeting the needs of the plant in those different areas and different stages of growth with our nutrition. The plant will actually do that on its own physiologically. When it goes from vegetative to reproductive phase, you'll see a shift in the requirement or the need for different nutrients because of the different biochemical processes that are being activated or suppressed at those particular stages. It's a very dynamic system, one that we can modify and change and to get the specific end product that we are really striving to produce to meet the needs of our society. But we need to look for the specific elements that recognize that they're all part of an integrated system.

Excellent reminder. Don, thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your wisdom. It's very much needed and very valuable. Thank you and we hope to have you back again on the podcast sometime soon.

Thanks John and best wishes to you.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible, and since 2006 we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess, we measure, we test, we analyze and we provide recommendations based on scientific data and knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.