MICROMANAGEMENT THAT MAKES CENTS!

Stephanie Myslik, sales agronomist with Pride Seeds, is using NutriAg’s NutriAnalytics system to enhance fertilizer recommendations for corn and soybeans. Through tissue tests and data analytics, her research helps farmers understand nutrient interactions and hybrid-specific returns, aiming to optimize yields while minimizing costs.

Production agriculture is full of questions -about plant populations, planting depth, fertilizer rates, hybrid or variety selection, herbicide and fungicide timing, insect thresholds and dozens of other parameters. The challenge is that for every one question, there can be several reasonable, value-based answers, depending on the specific location or growing season. 

Stephanie Myslik is working to find more of those answers and remove some of the mystery out of growing better crops. A sales agronomist with Pride Seeds, she has spent much of the past two growing seasons working with NutriAg and its NutriAnalytics system, combining tissue tests with data analytics. Together, they provide fertilizer recommendations based on a number of specific characteristics, including hybrids.

The technology is in use throughout North America, in Canada and the U.S., however it is highly region-specific. Chatham-Kent is one of those regions in Ontario where its use is more concentrated. The NutriAnalytics platform is primarily vegetable-based and the company’s developed the algorithms accordingly for those crops. Corn and soybeans are being incorporated into the system but it’s harder to show a return on investment when discussing smaller increases in performance. It’s been a slow road thus far, working with the technology and trying to show growers the value of the system.

Slow but steady

According to Myslik, NutriAg started developing the NutriAnalytics platform 10 to 12 years ago, and it’s based on the same tissue tests the company had been using, along with collected yield data. The work featured the development of an algorithm that would work in the background using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine how nutrients interact. The theory is that changing one nutrient will alter the reactions of others and the work Myslik has been conducting seeks to determine how those altered reactions will affect yield. She’s attempting to determine the level at which the tissue analysis and fertilizer recommendations combine to provide the best return on investment.

“It’s something we’re doing to learn more about our hybrids and find ways to help growers achieve more returns,” says Myslik, who has conducted small-plot work at Pride Seeds’ research farm at Pain Court, Ontario. “Growers want to push their yields and they want to know that we’re looking at ways to help them do it,”

 The challenge -as is often the case -is helping growers boost their yields while ensuring they’re finding value in the analysis and resulting recommendations. That’s often the point where growers have an issue with investing in emerging technology. They want to know, “How much is this going to cost me?” -ahead of “How much can I make using it?”

Different approaches

In 2023, Myslik worked to find whether the NutriAnalytics system paid (generated a definitive advantage) and how hybrids reacted differently. In 2024, she added in fungicide response to determine whether there was a synergistic effect between the NutriAg foliar fertilizer and the fungicide application. Or does one do better on their own compared to the other?

For 2025, her plan is for a deeper investigation based on applications, taking three tissue tests in corn followed by three applications of the foliar fertilizer. Realistically, adds Myslik, most growers won’t go to such lengths because it’s cost prohibitive. She’d rather try feeding corn after Test 1, 2 or 3 and then determine which one will benefit the most. By narrowing the test to one option, she’s more likely to have buy-in from a grower instead of expecting them to try all three.

 “That’s the hold-up -is with adoption in field crops, where most growers aren’t necessarily seeing a value in it because they don’t want to try it,” says Myslik. “I’m science-based and very curious, but I’m also one of those people who want to ‘see it to believe it’. I have a hard time asking a grower to do something if I don’t know whether it’s going to pay them back or have a return.”

 When Myslik joined the staff at Pride Seeds, she saw an opportunity to conduct this type of research without asking a grower to use their own money. Her plot work encompasses all nutrients -macros as well as micros. Despite the standard focus on nitrogen -especially in corn -it’s the one macro-nutrient they haven’t been working with. Instead, they’ve been testing for potassium, phosphorus and boron, which seems to have been garnering more interest in the past few years with the understanding that levels are not where they should be.

Following a lead

The theory behind the NutriAg system is reminiscent of a “production wheel” construct developed in the late 1980s and published in the Best Management Practices series on Field Crop Production. One of its statements was that “each time you change one part of your system, such as tillage or herbicide, there may be a chain reaction.” The NutriAg system addresses nutrients and it also goes one step further. It’s able to predict (the effect of that change) and it can predict it in advance of it showing up in the tissue tests, which was interesting to see,” says Myslik.

The few growers who are using it on a field scale are finding it a challenge to determine its value, she adds. That’s also a factor since there is a charge for the tissue test.