At first glance, the A&L Plant Monitoring Program may seem like nothing more than a conventional plant tissue test.
However, A&L Soils Canada president Greg Patterson says the company’s tissue testing process is a vital piece of a bigger puzzle.
“The poorest tissue tests on your farm should come mid-season from your best producing field. People don’t understand that,” Patterson said.
“It’s because mid-season is when a crop is really taking up nutrients. The healthier the crop, the more nutrients it consumes.
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“The faster you drive your car, the more fuel it consumes. A plant tissue test mid-season is like a fuel gauge on your crop. A poor plant tissue analysis doesn’t mean you have a bad crop. It means your crop is pushing hard and if you, the producer, want more out of that crop, you’ve got to give it more fuel.”
Patterson said that early tissue testing, the main component of the program, has the most impact on harvest results.
He said farmers generally use plant tissue analysis for the wrong reason. If a field looks sick, they take tissue samples and send them for analysis to see what the problem is.
“By then it’s too late. If the problem is visual and you can see it with your naked eyes, then the damage has already been done. Fungicides for example. We tell growers it’s a waste of money putting fungicides on a crop that’s already full of disease. You need to find out early if a disease problem is possible.”
If tissue samples are taken earlier in the season, the report can give the grower two distinct benefits:
- If the crop may be threatened by a developing problem, the grower has time to address it before it gets out of hand and before it becomes visual.
- If the crop is healthy and there are no ominous warnings at the date of the sample, an early tissue test sometimes gives the producer an opportunity to turn a good crop into a great crop with the application of nutrients that may be running low.
“From our soil test report, we already know what deficiencies we had in each part of the field, so we designed a fertility input program to address those deficiencies,” Patterson said.
“But there are always environmental factors that come into play which are beyond our control. If you do your tissue test early enough in the growing season, you still have the chance to make adjustments to account for those factors.”
For wheat, A&L recommends growers take tissue samples in the four to five leaf stage.
“You want the sample before it’s into the reproductive stage. Once the crop is into the reproductive mode, it’s too late to regain lost yield potential.”
The best plan is to predetermine tissue sample dates and have them marked on the calendar. A&L has a 24 hour turnaround time on all tissue tests.
