Philom Bios Inc.
3935 Thatcher Avenue
Saskatoon, SK Canada S7R 1A3
1-888-744-5662
www.philombios.com

Achieve Corn Yield Potential

Enhancing Phosphate Fertility
Phosphate uptake by corn, especially in the spring, is critical for achieving optimum yields. To help improve P availability, a new tool in the fertility toolbox is JumpStart.

JumpStart Improves Corn Growth
JumpStart helps ensure that adequate phosphate nutrition is available at four critical growth stages:

1. Emergence and stand establishment — JumpStart helps to get the crop out of the ground fast.
2. Rapid growth — the root system that JumpStart helps develop equips the plant to better handle stresses such as drought and poor fertility.
3. Pollination — yield potential is established at pollination. JumpStart increases root growth, which reduces the effects of drought helping to keep pollen shed and silk emergence synchronized.
4. Grain fill and kernel development — the number of kernels per row is strongly influenced by plant nutrition. JumpStart helps ensure phosphate is readily available.

Early Vigor Season
Cool soil and/or residues greater than 30%, which are common under reduced tillage or early seeding, means phosphate is less available to plants. If early season phosphate availability is limited, it can reduce early season growth, and ultimately crop yield.

JumpStart is active in cool soils (as low as 40˚ F), and supplies an
immediately available source of phosphate to emerging seedlings.

Early season vigor is especially important where long-season hybrids are planted in cooler season areas. Proper phosphate nutrition means your crop is ready to achieve its full yield potential.

Greater Stress Tolerance
JumpStart promotes more root growth, and is able to increase phosphate uptake in all areas of the soil that the root explores.

Plants with larger root systems have the ability to better withstand a variety of stresses. Larger root systems help plants access moisture and nutrients better. The result can be better seed set, grain fill and improved grain quality.

Uniform Maturity
Using JumpStart helps ensure every plant can utilize phosphate more efficiently, giving the crop a more even supply of phosphate. This results in increased uniformity of crop emergence, development and maturity. Earlier, more uniform maturity often means earlier harvests and better grades.

JumpStart - Part of a Phosphate Fertility Program
Jumpstart does not replace phosphate fertilizer. Rather, JumpStart is used to improve soil and fertilizer phosphate availability and uptake, helping your crop reach its full yield potential.

JumpStart and Starter Fertilizer
When starter fertilizer is used, the seminal roots must grow into the 2 x 2 fertilizer band. JumpStart colonizes on the seminal roots as they start to grow, providing greater early season phosphate nutrition. Once the roots reach the band, JumpStart continues to work to increase phosphate use efficiency, increasing season-long
phosphate availability and uptake at all crucial growth stages.

Increased Broadcast Efficiencies
When all the phosphate is broadcast, JumpStart increases the availability of soil and fertilizer phosphate throughout the rooting zone. JumpStart first colonizes on the seminal roots, to provide early season phosphate availability; it then helps roots take up more soil and fertilizer phosphate throughout the growing season. JumpStart improves overall phosphate uptake — resulting in increased phosphate use efficiency.

Phosphate Fertility in Corn on Corn Rotations

A continuous corn growing system requires higher phosphate fertilizer applications to maintain needed soil phosphate levels compared to a common corn-soybean rotation. Part of the reason is that corn removes more phosphate per acre in the grain (60 lbs P2O5, 150 bu/ac yield) than soybeans (40 lbs P2O5, 50 bu/ac yield). Therefore, a continuous corn system has a higher phosphate nutrient requirement. Also, soybean roots have a distinctly different root system compared to corn, thus a corn-soybean rotation results in much more thorough exploration and use of relatively immobile soil nutrients, like phosphorous.

Phosphate fertility can be a challenge in a continuous corn system for two interrelated factors. Corn roots excrete calcium as part of its normal growth process. The excreted calcium may accumulate around root channels. This calcium has a tendency to bind with phosphate in the soil forming insoluable calcium phosphate. The result is a calcium “shield” forming around root channels.

The other factor affecting phosphate uptake in a continuous corn system is that corn roots will often follow the path of least resistance – i.e. an existing root channel in the undisturbed soil zone. The calcium “shield” can act as a chemical barrier and precipitate (bind) phosphate as it diffuses toward the root surface. Thereby keeping much needed phosphorous nutrient from the root.

It is reasonable to expect that in a continuous corn system the percentage of roots that will follow an old root channel will be higher than a corn-soybean rotation. The end result is a potential phosphate fertility challenge.

Calcium Phosphate Root Channel Shield	New Crop Corn Roots Follow Previous Corn Crops Root Channels
Corn roots excrete calcium. This calcium will bind with phosphate in the soil and can form a calcium phosphate shield as shown in the graphic above.	Normal cultivation clears some of the old corn root channels but many remain below the normal cultivation level. As the new crop corn roots explore the soil, they will take the path of least resistance and follow root channels left behind by the previous corn crop.

JumpStart in a Corn on Corn Rotation

The calcium shield left behind by the previous corn crop’s root system will bind phosphate into a form the current corn crop cannot access. The action of the soil fungus in JumpStart is that it breaks the calcium bonds leaving phosphate in a plant available form behind. Thus, JumpStart helps address the phosphate fertility
challenges of a continuous corn cropping system.

As the roots system develops from a JumpStart treated corn seed the soil fungus grows along the root system and follows the path of the corn root. The fungus thrives from root exudates, thus it stays close to the root. As the fungus grows and multiplies it produces acids that breaks calcium phosphate bonds and releases
phosphate in a form the corn seedling can use.

Therefore, as a corn root follows the path of least resistance down an existing root channel that has been cemented in calcium phosphate it brings with it the phosphate solubilizing soil fungus. The growing fungus breaks down the calcium shield and makes much needed phosphate available to the crop from the very soil
structure that would have otherwise prevented the crop from getting the needed phosphate fertility.

JumpStart is a phosphate fertility management tool that can help your corn crop get more from the phosphate already bound in the soil and the phosphate fertilizer you are applying. If you are in a continuous corn cropping system or are considering it, JumpStart should be a part of your phosphate fertility program.

JumpStart Treated Corn Roots	JumpStart Treated Corn Root Dissipating Calcium Shield
JumpStart colonized corn roots will solubilize bound phosphate in the soil. As the roots extend below the tillage zone and enter the root channels from the previous corn crop the soil fungus will work on solubilizing the calcium phosphate shielded root channel. Thus JumpStart treated corn will help the plant access the phosphate in the shield as well open the pathway for phosphate fertility from beyond the shield.