What is in this article?:
- Understanding the continuous corn yield penalty
- Best predictor
• Although corn can be cropped continuously, it is widely accepted that there is a yield reduction compared to corn rotated with soybean (CS).
As escalating corn prices have encouraged many farmers to switch to growing corn continuously, they wonder why they have been seeing unusually high yield reductions over the past several years.
The University of Illinois conducted a six-year study that identified three key factors affecting yield in continuous corn (CC) systems.
“Prior to this study, the most common management recommendations for continuous corn production were to apply an additional 45 pounds of nitrogen per acre and reserve your best crop land for it,” said U of I soil scientist and lead author Laura Gentry. “Very little was known about the agents or mechanisms causing reduced yields in continuous corn systems.”
Although corn can be cropped continuously, it is widely accepted that there is a yield reduction compared to corn rotated with soybean (CS). This difference is referred to as the continuous corn yield penalty (CCYP), which is generally in the range of 20 to 30 bushels per acre. The 2012 growing season marked the third consecutive year of unusually high CCYP values in the U.S. Midwest, often with corn yields that were 30 to 50 bushels per acre less than corn following soybean.
The researchers conducted the experiment from 2005 to 2010 in east-central Illinois, beginning with corn produced in a third-year CC system or a CS rotation, at six N fertilizer rates. The study investigated: 1) how the yield penalty changed with time in CC, 2) under what conditions increasing the nitrogen (N) fertilizer rate reduced the penalty, and 3) what causes the penalty?
Each year, they determined an “agronomically optimum N rate” and corresponding yield value for each rotation (CC and CS). On average, corn yield at the agronomically optimum N rate for CC was 167 bushels, compared to 192 bushels per acre for CS – a CCYP of 25 bushels per acre. CCYP values ranged yearly from 9 to 42 bushels per acre.
Matias Ruffo, a co-author of the paper and Worldwide Agronomy Manager at The Mosaic Co., said, “To explore the causes of the CCYP, we tested a number of different weather- and yield-related measurements for their relationships with the CCYP. We found that with just three predictors, we could estimate the CCYP with almost 100 percent accuracy.” The predictors were: 1) unfertilized CC yield, 2) years in CC, and 3) the difference between CC and CS delta yields.