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Evenness of Nitrogen Application

Uneven application of nitrogen fertilizer is a longstanding problem that is getting worse. The main causes of uneven N application are:

1) Anhydrous ammonia manifolds that distribute N unevenly to knives.

2) ‘Dusty’ dry N fertilizer (urea or ammonium nitrate) spread with spinner spreaders. This problem is getting worse due to increasing imports of dry N fertilizer, leading to more handling (augering) and breakdown of prills or granules into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces can’t be spread as far as larger ones, and N rate is higher in and near the applicator path.

Newsletter article on Uneven N Applications.
Our ‘Best Management Practices for Nitrogen Fertilizer in Missouri’ manual has a section on uneven N application. (Warning -- this takes a little while to load, PDF is 4 MB).