 Okay. Good morning everybody. Obviously the topic today is not your management for Alabama Week and I certainly want to recognize someone here that was instrumental in working with this project Charlie Burr-Meister he's retired obviously but he certainly helped with setting up this project and kind of coming up with questions and what we were trying to answer so I want to recognize his efforts for sure. Basically this work came about we started this in 2008 and that was when we production was really starting to increase in the state you can look at this graph and see how it really jumped up to around 200,000 acres and stayed fairly steady and I obviously only kept data to 2014 but that's what led to this work of the questions that were associated with this type of work for week. Now the background for this was when people were getting back into weak production you know they had a lot of questions about the management practices to maximize their wheat yields and one of the things is they were interested in conservation tillage practices and they wanted to know if they needed to apply higher nitrogen rates with these types of systems and they were concerns related to if you're using conservation systems would it delay wheat emergence and plant development and then in addition to the nitrogen rates they were concerned about the timing of applications so these were kind of the questions that we that helped guide us to set up this experiment to examine wheat production here in Alabama and one of the things I think most people recognize this but I just want to mention and this is some data that Charlie Mitchell shared from the color of rotation and it kind of makes a good point you know nitrogen obviously is a can be a limiting factor for wheat production and you can see there that lime is probably the most limiting factor but generally that's not going to be a problem most people know to keep their fields aligned and so forth but notice how phosphorus and potassium can be very detrimental for wheat production so we can talk about trying to maximize nitrogen you know correct timing and all those kind of things but if we don't have phosphorus and potassium levels correct it's not going to make any difference so that's just kind of a reminder for everyone and you know to use a general soil test make sure you correct those problems as well for the objectives for this for this research we looked at determining the level of tillage necessary to optimize wheat yields and then determine optimum nitrogen fertilizer fertilizer race and timing across these tillage systems and this little picture here and I should have referenced I can't remember where exactly it came from there's something from the extension service but you can see you know we have a high concentration of wheat each one of those dots represents a certain number of acres we have a high concentration in North Alabama some in Central Alabama and then a good distribution across Southeast and Southwest Alabama so fortunately in the Alabama extension system our experiment station system we have locations that correspond to those areas so we set up this this project in each of those four locations at Tennessee Valley E.B. Smith Wiregrass and Gulf Coast and so we have four different soil types and we did this for 12 site years so we have a pretty robust data set to to take a look at this information for tillage and nitrogen and I certainly don't want to imply this is the end-all test for wheat and nitrogen it just happens to be the latest information that we have related to wheat and nitrogen in Alabama like I said we did have 12 site years but unfortunately we had to drop three of those years and I'll take a look at Tennessee Valley we had head scab that hit up there and the yields were down they weren't as bad as what you would think but they were low for Tennessee Valley and obviously we just didn't want a chance of any kind of differences associated with the scab versus our treatment so we threw that one out we had a bad choice on a variety at Gulf Coast we had one that was planted with a long burnalization period and obviously we were not going to get that at Gulf Coast so we threw that one out and then at Watergrass we had an area that was extremely sandy area and it was low in phosphorus and unfortunately even though all the several people communicated we need to put phosphorus out I don't think it ever got put out because our yields were like the highest were like 20 bushes to the acres so we just didn't use that obviously we didn't want to come found our results with that so these are the nine site years that we wound up with you can see the first one was at Tennessee Valley obviously initiated in the fall of 2007 you can see the soil series the cultivar that was used the planting date and harvest date for these nine site years just to give you an idea of what we were dealing with and how planting dates and harvest dates corresponded now our design we used was just a simple split plot design we had a tillage system as the main plot we used conventional tillage or non-inversion and with non-inversion we use what that's in this picture here on the top left that KMC subsoil leveler and basically it eliminates deep deep compaction but it also maintains some residue on the soil surface and then at Tennessee Valley because we were dealing with a different soil type up there a little bit heavier we looked at straight no-tillage there and then for our subplots we had 12 different combinations of nitrogen rates and this included we had some fall applications where we used granular fertilizer and then we came back in the spring with typically a 28 percent ua solution and you notice here we had 12 different nitrogen rates by four replications that's 48 plots times two tillage treatments that's 96 so each one of these tests was very large tests it was a lot of labor associated with these tests but I feel like it generated some good information for us the treatments here this just gives you a list of the 12 different treatments and application times you can see we look at fall supply nitrogen with zero or either about 20 pounds we possibly could have went a little bit higher than that but obviously we didn't want to burn the weed or anything so we and then we split up rates across feats four or feats six growth stages and basically we just looked at three different rates there 60, 90 and 120 pounds 90 being our recommended 60 would be a low and then 20 would be just a high and then we split those up and you can see the combinations of sometimes we split them over the growth stages sometimes and then when we applied fall nitrogen we just made up the difference either feats four or feats six and for those of you just to remember reminder feats four is approximately in the tests that we were doing here and the conditions we had it was feats four was occurring approximately around early to mid-bed wearing and maybe a look you know we maybe a couple weeks later at Tennessee Valley but that was roughly the time frame and then feats six would come in about a month after that approximately so that shows you kind of our our time about application this is just a picture from wiregrass kind of shows one of the one of the locations you can see we did have a lot a lot of variability in the in the experiment as far as you know very green plants to very obviously nitrogen efficient plants so there was definitely some some differences we observed across this experiment one of the things that we looked at is and which is obviously important and we is is tiller data we counted these tillers at the feaks four some of you are probably familiar with the tiller work that's been done in North Carolina where people are using those to help guide nitrogen fertilization and we were trying to take a look at that so that's why we wanted to count the tillers as well but if you take a look at these effects here tillers and fall nitrogen you know because fall in was the only thing that would have been applicable for tiller for tiller data at that time because no nitrogen was put on so after we counted the tillers but notice how for the tillage data at Tennessee Valley there's actually no effect among tiller data for the tillers no effect there and very little effect on the coastal plain soils and we had one location that actually conventional tillage favored more tillers but it was not certainly not a consistent effect that we saw for tillers and tillers now for the nitrogen fall nitrogen it was imperative if you notice at Tennessee Valley we didn't see we didn't see any benefit which basically says to me there is some residual nitrogen that we're getting on those soils up there you know and generally we don't we don't account for residual nitrogen home for soil tests in Alabama and you know in this case I think we did see a little bit but I think it had to do with because it was in the fall if you went back and you know if you were planting a crop in the spring that nitrogen might have been denitrified or leached over the winter and probably would not have been there but because of the time and when we planted the crop you know we did see a little bit of benefit but then if you notice on the coastal plain soils each one of these where the X is it was obviously highly significant the fall applying in was extremely important to promote tiller production on these sandier soils and that and you know that's kind of intuitive that's what we expected kind of confirm some of the stuff that we have observed in the past when we take a look at tiller counts we like to say we're trying to see if we can see any kind of relationship with this and we we look at that compared to the wheat yields and there is a relationship but it's still you know there's a lot of a lot of variability in this plain about 50 percent of it but notice how you know we'd like to see a maximum that occurs maybe down you know more in this range would be more what you would be looking for our maximum occurred way over here probably maybe 175 tillers per square foot which is really a large number uh some of those I mentioned the work in North Carolina and you know they'll use a cutoff of say somewhere around 50 tillers per square foot roughly and you know we just if you look at that look how much variability we had or even if you go to 100 you know we had some that were down at 35 bushels to the acre and then we had some all the way up to 110 so what that's saying is obviously there's a lot of things that can happen to those tillers from the time you count to the time you actually harvest you can't just guarantee that you have tillers in the spring if you're going to guarantee a yield in the end and so again we've tried to compare this with some different things looking at nitrogen concentration of those tillers and you can see no relationship there and then of course we looked at nitrogen concentration and we yield because we had it but you you really don't want to do this even if there was a relationship because it's going to be time consuming you're going to have to collect the tillers, grind them, get them analyzed which kind of defeating the whole purpose that's the beauty of the tiller accounts is you can go out you can do it a farmer can do it or our consultant can do it go out and get an instant value that then hopefully you know you can relate it to some kind of nitrogen rate that's the ultimate goal of what we're trying to go for when we look at some of that data as far as how how it compared across the locations as I said that you know the fall in was imperative you see how it increased tiller density at coastal plain and then the biomass that also you know we had bigger plants how it helped semi healthier plants on the coastal plain limestone valley you can see there was no effect but we had more tillers in general at at Tennessee Valley but notice that the plants were much smaller if you look at that compared to coastal plain even though there's no difference in biomass we had smaller plants overall um so that was kind of interesting we also looked at feet six data because as I said we applied some nitrogen at feet four so we kind of wanted to see how this had an effect on the plant growth and you can see here we looked at in concentration on the coastal plain and where we had uh it was actually lower in concentration on the non-inversion tillage system but then when you look at the plant biomass we actually had bigger plants so this is this is not concerning to me it's just simply a dilution effect of the nitrogen that was in the plants um and if you take a look at limestone valley or Tennessee valley uh you can see we had higher in concentrations but notice the plant biomass the plants are smaller so again it's that dilution effect I think these were not as diluted so we just had higher higher in concentrations there we did have an interaction that we observed with uh fall nitrogen and and the feet four nitrogen and coastal plain and basically it's just showing how with that 20 pounds of nitrogen at the higher in rays we saw a separation of our uh plant in concentration which not surprising but this just kind of helps support some of the you know things that we observed looking at the plant data throughout the grill one season we look at coastal plain we also saw I'm sorry actually this was more plant data for both locations and again it just drives on the point that fall applied nitrogen on the biomass production you can see it's much greater where we didn't apply any fall nitrogen limestone valley this was the only time that we I don't really understand this to be honest we did but it's the only time we saw significant differences limestone valley across any of these treatments we saw we did see a nitrogen increase a nitrogen concentration increase for the fall applied in and then if you take a look at the uh just looking at our spring in rays that's what I'm calling what we applied at feaks for early in the season you can see there were some differences but nothing that justified the high nitrogen 120 pounds we did not see a need for that in in these uh particular site years that we examined so you know the recommendations were still holding true we couldn't justify putting on more nitrogen for the tillage data this is related to harvest the yields and obviously this is this is averaged over each of the locations and we broke it out by coastal plain and limestone valley and you can see where we had non-inversion we had about a six bushel increase which is significant and I think that could be even more significant if you were thinking about where you only had to make one tillage pass and plant versus making multiple tillage passes with conventional operation and you know it would certainly affect your profitability associated with that there's going to have as many trips across the field you can see the protein levels were a little bit different uh actually a little bit lower for the non-inversion but again that was uh related to that dilution effect that we talked about and then at limestone valley you can see we didn't see any difference but in this case I think that's good instead of doing any tillage we can just drop right in there and plant instead of having to do any kind of tillage operation so the lack of difference there is good and you can see you know we had higher tillers at Tennessee Valley and we also had higher yields also so it kind of supports that the crude protein no real difference there between between the two at Tennessee Valley um there's more differences observed on the coastal plain sites let's go over those very quickly uh you know again just showing that 20 pounds of nitrogen we saw an increase uh the crude protein was lower but again it's being diluted I'm not concerned about that this shows how it was very important to put the nitrogen on at feaks four you know early in the season we needed to have that nitrogen on um and then you see the dilution again uh but again that's not to me a concern if somebody's trying to maximize the crude protein and they may want to help thanks a little bit differently but this shows the only case where we saw a justification for 120 pounds is that you know it did increase the crude protein of the grain which it makes sense that it probably take a little bit more nitrogen to increase the concentrations of the grain as opposed to maximizing the grain itself but again you see there was no justification for that high nitrogen rate on the uh on the weed um this this work has been summarized in other places and I put this slide up here so you can take a look at it if you want to see it some of you probably familiar with better crop sterile it has uh it's put out by IP&I and if you go to this web link and it's the year 2011 issue number three there's kind of a report written up about this experiment although it was kind of a preliminary report that we provided to those guys because they did provide some funding if you're a member of agronomy society you can go to crops and soils magazine they have a write-up about that particular experiment and they actually used it for a cca training so people could actually do a self-test on it and get cca credits and then of course if you really are concerned and come to this agronomy journal article here that we wrote up related to to the work and I do want to mention one other thing we talked about uh tiller counts but you know there's a lot of interest in variable rating applications and you know that's using a sensors to predict nitrogen rates on the go a lot of people use um the NDVI the green seeker or some um then there's also the crop circle the red edge you basically use these to develop a yield prediction equation and correlate that with nitrogen rates and we did take a look at this over all these experiments and I'll show you the relationship here it's uh this is for the green seeker data and this is for a lot of not just the data that I talked about but this is for 24 site years of data related to weed and nitrogen fertility that we conduct in Alabama and you can see here that like we we apply this yield versus this speaks for in say and that's basically that stands for in season yield uh in season estimate yield and it's basically NDVI divided by the growing degradation time it was planned to the time you did the uh sensing and so you can see there might be a relationship there but I'm not ready to put it out there and show anybody yet but we could take that information and possibly develop some kind of algorithm to help us with on the go nitrogen fertilization as the goal and then we also look at the crop circle data this is uh you know we didn't have as many locations but you can see it I kept it on the same scale you can see how it smells a little bit more sensitive a little bit smaller the values are a little bit smaller but you know this one looks like a straight linear relationship you really want to see some kind of plateau there so to know that you've reached a maximum so with that just to summarize you know the non-inversion and no tillage produced comparable yields conventional tillage across Alabama the fall applied in was essential for coastal plain soils but not on the limestone valley totally applied by feaks for it was necessary to optimize yields on the coastal plain and the tiller data was not successful to predict and requirements under these conditions now one of the things you know I want to touch on that we talked about North Carolina and they've had some success with this they're a little bit different latitude than us and I'm wondering if maybe we should have been counting our tillers maybe a little bit earlier for example maybe we need to be counting tillers right now instead of waiting till February and maybe that could have made a little bit of difference I'm not sure but I don't have any data obviously to support that but based on you know what we saw just curious that that might be a solution and then at limestone valley you know we just had a lot more there was obviously factors then and this study that uh for control of wheat yield it wasn't a non-inversion tillage uh for that particular location and I certainly want to thank the financial support provided by the Alabama wind fee grant commission and uh happy and I and thank the technical supports at the IRS and the experiment stations and I guess I want to be able to you know of course so that concludes my presentation does anyone have questions sort of a question for you uh Kim in regards to our hessian flies one of the effects that it has is it reduces the number of tillers you have per square foot and um in our publication we have a little bit of thing about if you have like more than 20 percent of your tillers and bested with hessian fly um don't put the nitrogen on you know because probably your yield potential your chance of yield potential is going to be low yeah so um and sort of thinking about this reduced tillers and infestation levels and in turn what kind of guidance would you have in terms of what you found out about do you put putting on the nitrogen I mean when do you think you would just abandon the field can you can you can you kind of make a guesstimate on that uh I know I mean I know your dots were all over the place but yeah and that's what makes you nervous but I really don't have to put nitrogen on I know I don't have a good um I don't have a good answer because really the you know if you had a low number of tillers then that would tell me that I need to be putting the nitrogen on you know I need to be trying to salvage what I can't there in terms of like I had a high number we may be thinking we want to back off on the nitrogen as far as at that particular growth stage so it's it's hard for me to say uh what would be the ideal you know cutoff level um for when you know when you just say we're not going to put any out I think you know hopefully if you had fall if you put some fall plot in uh you know you'd be able to see that nitrogen was was having some effect on your uh on the tillers and so forth and go from there but I don't have a good answer for that uh I have to think about that one some more okay yeah because it just suddenly occurred to me as I was listening to you talk it's like well yeah that's sort of similar thing because I will sort of say you know give this recommendation based on the regressions that David Funtin had done about you know what your potential yield looks like based on your percent invested tillers at the time you put you know in this early early winter you know so well see I think like you're talking about tillers that are their damage and they're not going to come you know they're they're yeah that's on top of the ones that they don't they even reduce the number of tillers you have for square foot so that's another story but yeah so we're just going to damage tillers and not looking at total number when I make my recommendation but I suddenly get to thinking about yeah and it could be my mentality because my my my mentality is we don't have enough tillers I'm going to get them going you know so that's kind of we're coming at it from a different angle so that's why it's hard for me to say which yeah won't be the right number