To enhance wheat and barley productivity for producers through optimizing the efficacy of arbuscular mycorrhizae mediated crop-nitrogen uptake

Project Description

Increasing demand for greater cereal crop yield often motivates increasing the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, leading to growing conditions with lower input use-efficiencies. Commercial agricultural products available to producers, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculants, have been developed to improve cereal crop productivity through enhanced nutrient acquisition. However, there is still a need to quantify the efficacy of AMF inoculation in different Canadian cereal crop varieties. Moreover, the physiological mechanisms altered by AMF to achieve potential benefits to nitrogen use efficiency need to be further understood. Extrinsic crop management factors have been shown to impact AMF-host symbiosis and may influence the efficacy of AMF inoculants. As growing conditions and fertilization strategies are not always consistent across producers, the potential of AMF inoculation must be determined in various management situations, cereal crop varieties or in combination with other agricultural products such as fungicides or nitrification inhibitors. The overall goal of the proposed research is to optimize arbuscular mycorrhizae inoculation potential and subsequent nitrogen use efficiency in cereal crops. This research will provide valuable agronomic knowledge that will enable producers to be more efficient in the application of nitrogen fertilizers and validate the efficacy of AMF inoculation in conjunction with common pesticides used in Canadian cereal crops.

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Research Results

The work targeted “To enhance wheat and barley productivity for producers through optimizing the efficacy of arbuscular mycorrhizae mediated crop-nitrogen uptake.” We have put out replicated small plots field trials in 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons.

They were located at three different sites in the Edmonton area.

1. Ellerslie site, located north of old U of A Ellerslie research station (135 St and Ellerslie Road),
2. Nisku site, located a few blocks south of old U of A Ellerslie research station (Range Road 251 and Township road 510),
3. Beaumont site, located 2 km north of Beaumont on Range Road 240. We also have one on-farm site, which is located 2 km east of Fort Saskatchewan, and it consists of single air seeder pass per treatment.

The objective of this research was to investigate the in-field efficacy of AMF inoculation using a commercially available product (i.e., Agtiv Field Crops comprised of Glomus intraradicies) in wheat for improving crop productivity under reduced nitrogen fertilization strategies.

We aimed to achieve this goal through:

• analyze if AMF-mediated improvements to crop productivity are a function of common dissimilarities in commercial Canadian wheat production systems (i.e., wheat class, nitrogen fertilization rates, and site fertility),
• determine how common foliar fungicides (e.g., picoxystrobin and propiconazole) can influence AMF symbiosis,
• quantify the microbial impact that AMF inoculation has on the rhizosphere.