Farmscape for October 28, 2008   (Episode 2999)

Initial evaluations of a new solid manure injection system show promising results.

The University of Saskatchewan's Department of Soil Science has completed year two of a three year evaluation of a prototype solid manure injection system developed by the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute at Humboldt.

Three rates of solid cattle manure, including one supplemented with nitrogen fertilizer, applied using injection, broadcast and broadcast and incorporation are being compared to an unfertilized check.

Soil research scientist Dr. Jeff Schoenau says the effect of different rates, placements and combinations on crop yield, crop nutrient uptake, soil nutrient levels and distribution and nutrient runoff potential are being evaluated.

Clip-Dr. Jeff Schoenau-University of Saskatchewan  
We didn't see really much difference between the different placements of the manure in terms of effects on yield whether it was broadcast, broadcast-incorporated or injected.

This maybe isn't too surprising when we consider that the manure that we were dealing with really didn't have a lot of immediately available nutrient in it.

We did see some response in yield to the manure additions in both years but really not a great effect of placement.

We found our highest yields where we combined urea fertilizer with the manure that was injected.

I think that can be attributed to the fact that the solid cattle manure has pretty low nitrogen availability in the year of application.

So the addition of the supplemental urea fertilizer really helped in terms of increasing the supply of nitrogen and actually helped the crop use the phosphorus that was being applied with the manure as well, so that gave us our best response.

Dr. Schoenau notes data looked at so far also indicates that  broadcast and incorporation and injection is lowering the concentration of potentially mobile phosphorus at the soil surface.

The study has one season to go and a final report is expected in about a year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council