2026 Agronomy Summit - Dr. Connor Sible

Hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop Podcast. My name is Catherine Seabrook, and I'm a commercial agriculture educator with University of Illinois serving Joe Davis, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. Talking Crop is a row crop production podcast and episodes typically occur every other week during the growing season, but we're putting out some special bonus episodes throughout January to spotlight each of the presenters joining us at the Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit happening January 28 at Highland Community College in Freeport. The Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit is a one day conference tailored towards corn and soybean producers, agribusiness representatives, and ag agency professionals to provide them with the latest in agronomic research from university faculty and extension specialists. Our goals are to provide producers with applied information they can implement on their farms and to give agriculture professionals the knowledge they need to serve the farmers they work with.

You can register online for the Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit at go.illinois.edu/agsfreeport, or you can call our Stevenson County office at (815) 235-4125. Registration is $25 and includes lunch. Five continuing education units will be available for certified crop advisors. As of last year, this program has been adopted across the state, and you can find a list of all agronomy summits in the series at go.illinois.edu/agronomysummits. As mentioned previously, these special bonus episodes are meant to introduce you to our speakers and give you a taste of what they'll be speaking on at the Agronomy Summit in Freeport on January 28.

The next guest for our bonus episodes is Doctor. Conor Sibel, research assistant professor in the crop physiology lab at University of Illinois. Doctor. Sibel's presentation is titled Why Do We Fertilize? Reviewing Corn and Soybean Nutrient Needs and Best Fertility Practices.

Doctor. Sibel will review the nutrient needs and distributions for corn and soybean, identify the traditional focuses, and highlight new research on 4R practices to help optimize fertilizer use efficiency and return on fertilizer investment. Please enjoy this special bonus episode of Talking Crop with Doctor. Conor Sybil, who will be joining us at the Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit on January 28. We hope to see you there.

Hello, Conor, and welcome back to the Talking Crop Podcast. Thanks so much for being with me today.

Thanks for having me back. It's always good when you get the invitation to come back.

Yes. Absolutely. And so this is a special episode of Talking Crop. You have, of course, been on the the podcast before, but this is a special bonus episode as you are going to be joining us at the Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit on January 28 at Highland Community College in Freeport. And, of course, this is your third year in a row of speaking at Agronomy Summit, so thank you yet again for joining us.

We're really excited to have you back. Your presentations are always a hit, and, of course, we really appreciate your local connection since you are from this area as well. And so this is an opportunity for potential attendees, hopefully, at the Agronomy Summit to get to know you a little bit before seeing you speak at Agronomy Summit, if they've not already done so, and to get a taste of what you're gonna be presenting on at the summit. So, Conor, can you first provide us with some of your background?

Yeah. And as you mentioned, I am local to that area. Grew up in Ogle County, just between Byron and Oregon. So Oregon address, Byron Schools. Did FFA, four h, that got me into agriculture, and then moved down to Champaign for my undergrad.

And my dirty little secret is I'm in Illini inbred because I never left the University of Illinois, did all my degrees there, and then a short postdoc about two and a half years, and then just joined the faculty officially in the last fourteen months or so. So just a little over the year, as a faculty member in the crop sciences department, pretty much looking at field trials for yield corn, soybean, and, not as much for that region up there, but we have started doing a little bit of wheat work for our southern counterparts. But, yep, that's that's me in a nutshell, high yield corn soybean. If I had to really summarize it, it's products, practices, and their interaction to get a higher productivity.

So your presentation title for the Agronomy Summit this year is why do we fertilize? Reviewing reviewing corn and soybean nutrient needs and best fertility practices. Can you give us an overview of what your presentation will be covering?

Yeah. And in the couple of years, we've crammed a lot in the presentation. So this will be a little more focused, largely nitrogen and phosphorus. And when we think about fertilizer and how we fertilize our crops, everyone has their unique way to do it, right? Every acre's different.

Every neighbor might do it in a different way. But there's a lot of things that have been consistent over time. And a lot of us might be doing things that way that our parents did. There's new technologies coming that's both on the fertilizer source side, but also with the equipment and how we get the fertilizer to the field when we get the fertilizer to the field. And so that's what we're really going to highlight, what our research has been showing about some alternative approaches to getting fertilizer to the crop.

And ultimately, if I had to summarize the main takeaways is how can we be the most efficient? We know we have to continue to improve our yields. Everything about yields comes down to good, sound nutrient management. And, you know, some of the strategies around there may be reduced or our inputs, but we don't want to necessarily reduce our yields incidentally with that. So what if we can just maintain our inputs but maximize the efficiency, I.

E. Make sure that the applied nutrients end up in the plant and aren't just stuck around in the soils. So that's the gist of what we're going to go through. But a lot of it's what's new on the fertilizer sources and then what's new in the application technology and how we can use that to our benefit.

You mentioned how there are many different ways to fertilize and everyone's situation is unique. And it reminded me as I was thinking about our upcoming conversation earlier, you know, I come from weed science background, and so our research is very different. We determine, hey. This weed is resistant to x, y, or z. This is exactly the reason why.

And then we move on, and it's kind of, you know, done and dusted. But with fertility, this research is has been ongoing for a very long time, and it continues to be. There's never a you know, here's the answer. Let's move on. What do you attribute that to?

Is it just the complexity, the all the different the new practices, the new products? What is your take on why this is kind of a never ending question?

I mean, the first and foremost reason it's it's never ending is because we always have new tools. There's, like I said, new fertilizer sources. I mean, and there's the basics ones like thinking of nitrogen, anhydrous urea, you again. But there's some new technologies that are polymer coated, maybe more slow release factors. And when we get new technologies, the new part means, you know, we don't fully understand how they may work in different environments, regions, soil types.

And so the fertilizer options keep growing. And as we have more options, we have to understand if that that new fancy technology is going to work on our acre or not. That's part of why we keep looking at it. The other thing that keeps changing is the equipment and the application technology so we can get more precise in how we place the fertilizer. That's probably been the biggest change.

And then, of course, everything interacts. So how does certain placements interact with the various sources you're using? So we always have these new technologies and therefore we have new research questions. That's why it's sort of never ending on that regard. The other thing in the background, that's also changing is yield level.

I mean, every year our farmers continue to impress and put out higher and higher yields, corn, soybean, all crops, really. When we have higher yields, we have higher nutrient needs. But does that influence how and when we can apply it? Because I don't think just front loading more and more and more is maybe the best way to get there. So that's the two things, new technologies and just higher yields necessitating more nutrients.

But we're in a time period where we're scrutinized more than ever on how much we are putting out there.

Yeah. And what I think is really great about the work that the Crop Physiology Lab does that you, of course, are a part of is that you do all that testing of these new up and coming technologies so that farmers you get that understanding and relay that to growers and farmers so that they don't necessarily have to go through that trial and error period at least quite as much as say you can as a research group. Right? And so you also just mentioned that there's scrutiny maybe from a higher level at how we fertilize, but relating to growers currently in the current economic situation that they find themselves in, they're making a lot more scrutinized decisions about their fertility practices because of this price cost squeeze that they've been experiencing and potentially will continue to into this upcoming growing season. So are there any pieces of advice that you're giving producers who might be considering maybe being more conservative this upcoming growing season?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a challenge on my end because as a yield scientist, everything about yield starts with good base nutrient management. And so the key thing there is I'm not necessarily wanting us to pull back, but certainly can we think about how and when we're placing different nutrients or is there a nutrient here or there that we might be able to go away from the big macros? I mean, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, those are huge. And when it comes to making yield, maybe some of these other nutrients we can maybe pull back a little bit potassium and then the micronutrients.

I know there's a lot of interest in tissue testing. I send this tissue test in and then I get the results back and it says these nutrients are deficient. We should foliar feed with a micro package. That's an area where we're doing a fair amount of work with the Illinois Soybean Association, largely soybean because of the ease of access in season to get a sprayer out. But there's a lot of unknowns.

And what should those critical levels be? So some of my recommendation at this point is stick to our good solid basics, our macros, our NP especially, and maybe on the tissue testing, foliar micronutrient micronutrient side, if we're looking to pull back, because I just don't know if we fully understand the impacts and the value of those applications at this time. And the tissue tests themselves can add up quickly when you send a lot of samples in on a weekly basis across the acreage. So some folks may think, well, you know, do I really want to pull that input because I think there's value there. But don't forget about the cost of the tissue test in addition to that foliar application that you're going to do.

That adds up quickly. So that might be an area in the next year or so that we could maybe save some funds on, stick to our basics, rethink for a year how we maybe want to strategize for those more progressive ideas of, like, micronutrients with tissue sampling.

So, Conor, you mentioned earlier that in your presentations at the Agronomy Summit, you've put a lot into them. And in the past, you've talked a lot about biologicals. I think the past couple years, your topics have been on biologicals. And so I wondered, will they end up making an appearance in your presentation this year in any way? And do you think that they have a place in fertility plans?

So in short, on the first part of that question, I think they might make a small appearance on the phosphorus discussion. But with nitrogen, we're not gonna go into the nitrogen biologicals for this talk. And when I think about the second part of your question was, does biologicals have a place in crop nutrition? I think they certainly can and will. Today's market is a much more volatile and the consistency is hard.

But as somebody has been working with these nine years now, I've got nine growing seasons working with these. There's enough there for me to get excited about where the future is going. So I think definitely in the next decade, these are going to be something that we can maybe count on them a little more reliably. But today, don't think that we're quite ready to replace good sound fertilizer management with a biological. The reason that the phosphorus ones might make an appearance is because that's the area that I do see some potential.

And maybe the sneak peek there will tell you why the phosphorus stabilizers are the one I think to maybe have some focus on.

Great. Well, you, Connor, so much for all this information and again for joining us at the Northwest Illinois Agronomy Summit on January 28 in just a few weeks. We look forward to having you, and we will see you then.

Looking forward to it as well. Always good to come back home and see some familiar faces, but definitely let's get some new faces there as well.