How to Use the Nitrogen Tool

Advantage Acre’s nitrogen tool leverages the Purdue University Irris Nitrogen modeling tool along with Weather Trends 360 weather data and functional soil mapping to create highly detailed modeling of soil nitrogen and the impact it can have on your crop production practices.

Accessing the Nitrogen Tool

To access the nitrogen tool the user will click on “Soil” in the top right-hand corner of the screen (Figure 1), then proceed to click on “Nitrogen” located on the left-hand side of the screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Nitrogen Tool

Once the user clicks on the “Nitrogen” tab, on the left-hand side of the screen the user will see a customized, calculated nitrogen prediction. If they’d like to view the “Nitrogen at growth stage” they can edit the growth stage by clicking on the drop-down (Figure 2).  For the tool to work, the user first must enter a planting date and select a hybrid.  Keep in mind that the tool only works for corn.  

Figure 2: Nitrogen Calculation

The user can also access map layers for the following options:

1. Soil supplied
2. Amount lost
3. Uptake since planting
4. The amount available at growth stage

To access the map layers, click on the small drop-down button located on the right side of each option. Below is an example of a generated map for soil supplied N (figure 3).

Figure 3: Soil applied Map

If the user would like to customize the nitrogen calculations, they should click on the green button located at the bottom of the screen labeled “Customize Nitrogen Calculations”(Figure 4). The user will then have a pop-up on the screen labeled “Nitrogen prediction settings” from here the user can make the edits they would like and once they have done so they will click “Save” (Figure 4).

Once the user has the calculation the way they would like it, they can choose to “export nitrogen predictions” (Figure 5). Once they clicked this, they will then see a zip file appear in the left-hand corner of the screen (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Export Nitrogen Predictions

This zip file is the field average for the nitrogen model.  Users can also export the nitrogen data for a specific point in the field.  Expand one of the nitrogen layers and a new button will appear to Export at a point.  Click the ‘Export at a point’ button and then click in the field where you want to download the modeled data.

Figure 6: Export at a Point

In the downloaded zip file, users can view the nitrogen data in excel or go to https://www.purdue.edu/agsoftware/irrigation/ and download the Irris software for further analysis.