—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 6,1978
134
Nitrogen on no-till corn creates acid
UNIVERSITY PARK -
Fanners planting no-tillage
corn should be aware of
potential problems in using
nitrogen fertilizer, a
research agronomist at The
Pennsylvania State
University declared
recently.
“No-tillage corn fields
given high rates of am
monium sulfate or am
monium phosphate will most
likely need to be limed or
plowed every other year to
avoid soil surfaces so acid
that herbicides won’t work,”
stated Dr. Richard H. Fox,
crop scientist dealing with
soil fertility.
“The fact is,” he affirmed,
“weeds must be controlled
chemically in no-till com
fields.”
And he pointed out that
significant amounts of
nitrogen can be lost as a gas
when urea-containing fer
tilizers are used. That’s
because the fertilizer is not
incorporated into the soil in
no-till com management, he
said.
In addition, Dr. Fox
recommended that am
monium-containing or
ammonium-yielding fer
tilizers should not be spread
on fields where lime has not
been worked into the soil. He
explained that lime may
cause a large fraction of the
nitrogen to be lost as am
monia gas.
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“Under the above cir
cumstances, the best
nitrogen fertilization for no
tillage com is to use am
monium nitrate and plow in
lime when necessary, or to
‘knife-m’ anhydrous am
monia,” he stated.
For every 100 pounds per
acre of nitrogen added to a
field as ammonium sulfate,
714 pounds of pure calcium
carbonate or lime are
needed to neutralize the
acidity produced in con
verting ammonium to
nitrate, he said.
“A farmer applying 200
pounds of nitrogen per acre
as ammonium sulfate to his
no-till com would need to use
over two tons of lime per
acre every three years just
to neutralize the acidity
caused by the fertilizer.”
“He would need to add
even more lime than this to
compensate for the ad
ditional acidity produced by
leaching of nutrients and
other weathering processes
that occur at varying rates
in the soil,” Dr. Fox af
firmed.
He pointed out that am
monium nitrate requires
only half as much lime to
neutralize the acidity as does
ammonium sulfate. The
same is true for urea and
anhydrous ammonia, he
added. However, as stated
earlier, nitrogen can be lost
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as gaseous ammonia with
the area fertilizers.
As for ammonium
phosphate, he reported there
is almost as much acidity
released with this fertilizer
in the nitrifying process as
there is with ammonium
sulfate. To neutralize the
acidity resulting from 100
pounds of nitrogen from
ammonium phosphate, 677
pounds of lime are needed.
In three years of no-till
experiments at Penn State,
Dr. Fox and associates found
that 180 pounds of nitrogen
per year as ammonium
sulfate reduced the average
pH of the surface inch of soil
to 5.1, almost two pH units
below the soil which
recieved no nitrogen.
At this low pH, herbicides
such as atrazme and
simazine are ineffective and
aluminum and manganese
may approach toxic levels.
Such toxicity can reduce
stands and yields. The pH of
the surface inch in some
plots treated with the high
rate of ammonium sulfate
was 4.8.
“Taking a normal soil
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sample to a depth of six
inches may miss the
problem of soil surface
acidity,” he cautioned. “The
average pH of the surface
six inches of the test plots
receiving 180 pounds of
nitrogen per acre as am
monium sulfate was 5.8
which was 0.7 units higher
than the pH of the surface
inch.”
The results demonstrated
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that after three years’ ap
plication, 90 pounds of
nitrogen as ammonium
slufate--or 180 pounds
nitrogen as ammonium
sulfate, ammonium nitrate,
or nitrogen solution per acre
per year—lowered
significantly the pH of the
surface inch of soil.
In 1977 there were three
ram-free days immediately
after nitrogen application.
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soil
the only year the rain-free
period was more than a day.
Treatments receiving urea
containing fertilizers in 1977
yielded 15 to 20 fewer bushels
per acre than the am
monium nitrate treatments
receiving the same rate of
nitrogen. This showed that
nitrogen can be lost as
ammonia gas from surface
applied urea in as short a
period as three days.
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