Iowa Nitrogen Initiative

Nitrogen fertilizer is among the most critical inputs to crop production – and one of the costliest. When applied at the optimum rate, nitrogen boosts productivity and profitability and avoids the environmental costs of excess application. However, finding the optimum application rate can be a challenge: it can vary by more than 100% from field-to-field and year-to-year.

What

The Iowa Nitrogen Initiative is a private-public partnership with a vision to provide Iowans with the best nitrogen science in the world for the benefit of productivity, profitability, and environmental performance.

How

We are working alongside agricultural service providers, farmers, and their advisors to design, execute, and interpret hundreds of coordinated on-farm, scientifically robust nitrogen rate trials every year. These trials provide data that helps us understand the interactions among genetics, weather, soil type, and management, and how those impact cropping system outcomes.

This on-farm data infrastructure will allow ISU to use the latest advances in super-computing and quantitative modeling to forecast best management practices and demonstrate how Iowa farmers can maximize efficiency of their dynamic operations.

N-FACT

N-FACT (Nitrogen Fertilization Application Consultation Tool) is an online tool powered by INI trials data and the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM), an advanced cropping systems model. N-FACT allows users to select inputs based on their farm and management decisions, including location, crop rotation, growing season precipitation, post-harvest soil nitrate, planting date, and market prices for corn and nitrogen. Based on these inputs, N-FACT outputs probability-based ranges of optimum N fertilizer rates.

N-FACT also hosts an INI trial data explorer that allows users to observe, benchmark, and compare optimum nitrogen rates across different locations, years, and managements. It can be accessed at https://n-fact.ag.

Together, these tools provide new information that allows users to improve nitrogen management for productivity, profitability, and environmental performance.

Recruiting Farmer Collaborators for 2025

Would you like to better understand and predict the optimum nitrogen fertilizer rate within and across your fields? We’re looking for farmers to participate in our field trials for 2025. Sign up for more information.