EAST LANSING, Mich. — Researchers frequently experiment to find out which inputs or combination of inputs will yield the best crop. That is, basically, Kurt Steinke’s work. He’s an assistant professor of soil fertility and nutrient management at Michigan State University, and he recently presented findings of wheat nutrient trials he’s led. Steinke spoke at the Michigan Wheat Program’s annual grower meeting in March.

An example of one of his recent experiments compared the results of Instinct II on a plot of winter wheat, compared to other treatments, as well as to a plot that went untreated. Instinct II is a nitrogen stabilizer made by Dow AgroSciences.

One plot was treated with Urea 46-0-0 and 28 percent nitrogen, another with Urea 46-0-0, Instinct II and 28 percent nitrogen, another with Agrotain Ultra instead of Instinct II and still another plot with all of the treatments. Agrotain is another nitrogen stabilizer, made by Koch Agronomic Services.

Steinke said Instinct II is an N efficiency product, a “nitrification inhibitor” that’s been newly approved for wheat.

Steinke used the combination of inputs on Red Dragon winter wheat. Although the treatments resulted in different yields, Steinke said the results weren’t statistically significant. This might really mean something, but he said it’s important not to read too much into just one experiment – such ambiguous results are common, he stated.

Steinke does about 7-12 wheat projects like that one each year. He does about 40-45 field studies each year. His projects include wheat, corn, sugarbeet and potato. Steinke is a busy guy.

Another project he did recently seems to underscore the message that one should be careful not to look for too many answers from just one experiment. In a project on sugarbeets, Steinke and colleague Andrew Chomas wanted to determine how to use polymer-coated urea (PCU) in sugarbeet production by examining blending ratios of PCU with urea.

The underlying reason for the experiment, Steinke wrote in a poster presentation, is the increasingly volatile prices of fertilizer as well as other factors.

PCU limits N availability by releasing N over a longer period of time as compared to soluble N fertilizers. “This might increase nitrogen use efficiency and reduce environmental N losses,” which if true would be an advantage for growers, given the factors stated above. But the experiment didn’t yield that kind of clear result.

“Few biologically significant differences were observed between treatments regardless of blending ratio,” they write. “No significant advantage nor disadvantage occurred to including PCU in 2013 and 2014 sugarbeet N applications.”

They conclude that the benefits of products such as PCU on sugarbeets may depend on the amount and timeliness of rainfall. Therefore, a grower would have to decide whether or not he wants to incur the expense of such a treatment for only a possible benefit.

Steinke, a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, said all of his research is funded by companies and all of the experiments he can publish he posts on the MSU soil fertility research website (listed at the end of this article).

Steinke is busy doing research at MSU and is a professor, but he says MSU does not actually pay for his research.

“MSU does not support a lot of research like this,” Steinke said in a recent interview. “MSU gives you a desk and a computer, but you have to get your own grant. We also work with the Michigan Wheat Program. I need technicians and other assistants and none of that is free.”

Typically, Steinke signs a contract with a company, with any luck receives funding, hires graduate students and other assistants and gathers whatever else he might need to conduct his research. Sometimes a company doesn’t want research publicized, he said, because a product might be experimental, might not work and might not even have a name yet.

To see more of Steinke’s wheat and other research, go to the MSU soil fertility research web page at www.soil.msu.edu