Pacific Nut Producer Magazine

Tag: Nitrogen Management

  • The Future is Here: Redefining Nitrogen Management with RDX-N®

    —Sponsored Content—

    Nitrogen is the backbone of crop production — no matter the crop, the region, or the state of the ag economy. But getting the most out of every pound you apply can differentiate a good season from a poor one. That’s where RDX-N® from Redox Bio-Nutrients comes in. This patented, plant-active botanical extract helps your crop use nitrogen more efficiently. It is the result of more than a decade of research and development.

    “RDX-N® is a flagship product because we now know how to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizer better,” said Redox Owner, Founder and CEO Darin Moon. “This is a long-term use, because use rates are extremely low and it’s very cost effective. Whether nitrogen is $1,000 a ton or $200 a ton, RDX-N® is cost-effective across the board because it is helping metabolize and make that nitrogen better. This should be integrated as a long-term play.”

    Real Results in the Field

    Redox agronomists are already working alongside nut growers throughout the Central Valley, and the reports are encouraging, including stronger overall crop health and improved yield.

    We continue to receive more data on product efficacy through a variety of sources, including commercial use, company research, and third party analysis from universities and contract research organizations.

    Redox Bio-Nutrients is among the top 20 biostimulant companies in the world, according to market research by DunhamTrimmer. The company’s technology is now trusted on a wide variety of crops and turf grass throughout the United States and around the globe.

    The Science Behind the Results

    At the core of RDX-N® — and the entire Redox product line — are Redox Active Molecules (RAM), plant-active compounds that regulate energy flow inside the plant. That regulation is what keeps a plant balanced, and a balanced plant is the single most important factor in yield and quality. Balanced plants channel energy into growth, yield and reproductive development. When it’s out of balance, that energy gets diverted into correction instead of production.

    So what exactly is RDX-N®? It’s important to start with what it isn’t: it is not a biological, a nitrogen stabilizer, or a nitrogen-fixing bacteria. When used in small amounts alongside synthetic nitrogen, it allows growers to cut nitrogen use by up to 50 percent — without sacrificing performance. This is possible because RDX-N® was built to support a plant’s natural metabolism and utilize applied nitrogen more efficiently. It’s easy to use and drops right into your existing fertility program. The result is reduced oxidative stress caused by nitrates and a significant boost in season-long uptake, utilization and performance unmatched in the industry.

    “I believe that RDX-N® is the future of agriculture,” said A.J. Borges, Redox Agronomist in Central California. “It’s uniquely using a biostimulant to stimulate the plant for better performance, helping the health and vitality of the plant. It’s a highly versatile product that can eliminate a lot of the nitrogen issues being experienced.”

    Get More From Your Nitrogen

    Growers face no shortage of challenges every season. The right technology can help you build a smarter, more resilient fertility program — one that delivers higher performance and more consistent results, year after year. Getting the most from your nitrogen isn’t just good agronomy; it’s good business.

    Find out more at RedoxGrows.com or reach out to us at info@RedoxGrows.com to connect with your regional Redox Agronomist.

  • AI Tool to Help Farmers Measure Real-Time Crop Health from the Field

    Leaf Monitor, a new mobile tool backed by artificial intelligence and predictive modeling, could revolutionize how farmers monitor crops and make decisions by providing real-time nutrition and leaf trait information in the field.

    “Having this information is very valuable for the farmers,” said Alireza Pourreza, associate professor of Cooperative Extension and director of the Digital Agriculture Laboratory in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at the University of California, Davis. “In five seconds, they can have a sense of how much nutrition they have in a leaf.”

    Development of the AI model was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s HiRes Vineyard Nutrition multistate project and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, as well as the California Table Grape Commission.

    Maha Afifi, director of viticulture research at the California Table Grape Commission, said the tool could be a game changer for the table grape industry if it leads to faster decision-making about fertilizer use. The right amount typically leads to healthier vines that produce more grapes with optimal size, weight and color.

    “The evaluation of vine nutrient status is one of our top priorities,” Afifi said. “At the same time, exploring new technology tools like this project is a high priority for us because they will be important to the future of the table grape industry.”

    Field testing

    The Leaf Monitor tool uses a handheld spectrometer to measure leaf reflectance beyond the range of light visible to the human eye.

    Once a leaf is scanned, its spectral data is uploaded to a cloud-based machine learning system designed to predict leaf traits and nutrient content. This algorithm was developed and trained by the Digital Agriculture Laboratory over five years using a dataset of thousands of leaf samples collected from California’s specialty crops, primarily grapevines and almonds. The samples were chemically analyzed to determine nutrient levels and structural leaf traits, providing the data needed to build an accurate prediction model.

    “Nutrient deficiencies in plants often go unnoticed until late in the season, by which point the damage is already irreversible,” said graduate student Parastoo Farajpoor, who is running the project. “This is why early detection is essential. Spectrometry provides a rapid and reliable way to identify these deficiencies before visible symptoms appear.”

    After a recent demonstration, Bulleseye Farms Irrigation Manager Geoff Klein said the tool could help save money and improve yields. Bullseye grows walnuts, pistachios, tomatoes, corn, wheat, rice and sunflowers in Yolo and Solano counties.

    Tailored crop management

    Currently, farmers typically take leaf samples, dry them, grind them up and send the samples off to a lab for testing, which can take up to two weeks to return results. Bullseye samples leaf tissues about three times a year.

    “Right now, it doesn’t really make sense to go out and take tissues in every single corner just because it’s expensive,” Klein said. “It’d be really cool if I could just walk out there and test a couple of different places.”

    The Leaf Monitor tool helps farmers tailor management decisions to specific areas rather than an entire field. Calibrating fertilizer use to real-time data can prevent overuse and nitrogen runoff, a financial and environmental challenge that many growers face.

    “I feel like there’s a lot of times we do need to put less [fertilizer] on, where we end up putting more, because that’s what the nitrogen removal formula says,” Klein said. “But with this app we can use less because we know the actual conditions at the time. I think it opens a lot of doors in terms of getting data back in real time and also utilizing the level of control we have with the data.”

    The app can also aggregate the scans and map out spatial patterns over a large area.

    “What we know is every field has variability that is not necessarily visible to the farmer’s eye,” Pourreza said.

    The prototype Leaf Monitor tool is free and included in a set of tools that can be downloaded on the Digital Agriculture Laboratory website. A web-based version of the tool will follow while the team continues to feed new data into the algorithm to refine the predictions. On average, it achieves about 65% accuracy across all traits, with predictions for certain nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, performing better than the overall average. Users will need to pair it with a spectrometer.

    “We need to produce more food while using less resources so we need to have some kind of monitoring system to give us precise and accurate feedback on our management practice,” Pourreza said. “This technology is growing very fast.” — By Emily Dooley, UC Davis

  • Successful Hullsplit Requires Thoughtful Irrigation, Nutrient Management

    While the onset of hullsplit signals that harvest season is near, it also marks the start of an unwelcomed orchard guest: hull rot. Almond hulls are susceptible to hull rot fungi from the beginning of hullsplit until the hulls dry, which is typically a month long, though the period may vary depending on fertilization and irrigation. Successful hull rot control is based upon effective strategic deficit irrigation and nitrogen management.

    Strategic Deficit Irrigation

    Strategic Deficit Irrigation (SDI) is the practice of stressing almond trees at specific crop stages to reduce water use without impacting crop productivity. By managing SDI, growers can reduce hull rot by 60–90% and experience a more uniform hullsplit and earlier harvest. These factors may contribute to less crop damage from weather, late-season NOW flights and aflatoxin contamination.

    The target period for stressing trees is from the start of hullsplit through 90% hullsplit, a period of about two weeks. The most accurate way to implement SDI is to use a pressure chamber to track and maintain slight tree water stress levels, between -14 bars and -18 bars, depending on the weather. Watch a short video from the Almond Board of California (ABC) about how to use a pressure chamber here.

    Growers who do not rely on pressure chambers, particularly those with a history of hull rot and a visual baseline from which plant stress can be observed, may achieve similar results by irrigating at 50% of normal tree demand, using crop evapotranspiration (ETc) calculations during hullsplit. More information about this strategy is available at the UC Almond Doctor’s website.

    Hullsplit typically occurs at the beginning of July in the early growing seasons and spreads to later growing seasons accordingly. However, onset of hullsplit can vary according to orchard conditions, with stress levels varying based on soil type and other factors. In shallow soils where trees may dry quickly, growers should initiate stress when blanks start to split, usually about a week before the onset of hullsplit. On deeper, well-drained soils, it can take up to 20-to-30 days to reach mild-to-moderate stress levels. In this case, growers may want to use the UC Almond Hull Split Prediction Modelto determine when to initiate water stress. More information about the fundamentals of strategic deficit irrigation are explained in this short ABC video here.

    Nitrogen Management

    Almond Board-funded research has found that excessive nitrogen increases incidences of hull rot. It is critical that a proper nitrogen budgeting plan is in place for the growing season to ensure that only the necessary amount of nitrogen is applied. It is important to follow the nitrogen budgeting plan throughout the growing season, which is a function of crop load.