G’day mates, I’m MP, and today, I’m taking you into the heart of the cornfield, where we find the rare, mysterious, feared, and magnificent crop doctor. Crikey! Here’s one spotted in the wild! (in my best Steve Irwin voice)
But for real, I asked Josh to take a picture for a post on Tissue Sampling and this is the array of photos I got from him.
Tissue samples turn us into “crop doctors”, sort of. By taking leaf tissue from the plant, we’re able to send it into a lab and have it analyzed for nutrient content. Kind of like you going in to have your blood tested, it gives us a snapshot in time of how the crops are doing.
We test both corn and soybeans and we’re able to analyze the results and use them to make decisions on what nutrients we’re going to apply to the fields. Some fields are tested weekly from when they’re just about shin high, all the way to after they’ve pollinated and have produced an ear. We do this so we can see the trends across growth stages and make improvements year to year.
Pretty scientific aye mate?
