Soil Characteristics and Nutrition of Poor-yielding Sugarbeet Areas
A research project to gather soil and topographic information about areas where sugar beets yield poorly. the information may help determine what can be done to ameliorate these poor yielding areas.
IPNI-2001-USA-ND11
28 Jan 2003
2002 Annual Interpretive Summary
Soil Characteristics and Nutrition of Poor-Yielding Sugarbeet Area, 2002 |
| Sugarbeet growers in the Red River Valley have experienced poor yields in relatively linear areas of fields. Although these areas produce high yielding rotational crops, such as small grains or corn, sugarbeet growth and yields are reduced. Plant growth in these areas begins later than adjacent areas in the field located on similar soil mapping units. As the growing season continues, canopy coverage in affected zones slowly begins to fill in and resemble normal zones nearby, but yields are markedly reduced at harvest. The problem persists in the same areas on consecutive beet crops, but corn growth is not affected following beets. It is likely that a soil and/or landscape factor defines these zones. Three sites were examined in 2002, but one site had to be abandoned because of poor soil and environmental conditions. Treatments included liming materials (dolomitic limestone and sugarbeet lime), potassium magnesium sulfate (K2SO4•2MgSO4; K-Mag), magnesium sulfate, boron, and starter fertilizer containing nitrogen and phosphorus. Only at one site did the treatments produce a significant increase in both beet yield and recoverable sugar. One of these treatments was K2SO4•2MgSO4 applied at 50 lb Mg/A and the other was 2 tons/A sugarbeet lime. However, neither of these treatments seemed to be as important to sugarbeet production as improving soil quality. Soils exhibiting poor sugarbeet growth in this study were sandy, low in organic matter, crusted easily, and were subject to wind erosion. It appears that before amendments tested in this study can be effective, the more yield-limiting problems of soil quality and erosion control must be addressed. ND-11F |