What is a deeper-rooted plant?
Overseer defines a deeper-rooted plant as any crop, pasture, or tree that has roots that have grown below 600 mm into the soil. A non-exhaustive list of deeper-rooted plants is below:
Maize, Oats, Wheat, Hemp, Rape, Barley, Sweetcorn, Sunflowers, Cocksfoot, Broad beans, Ryegrass, Clover, Pakchoi, Beans, Green beans, Lentils, Peas, Ryecorn, Triticale, Fodder Beets, Kale, Forage barley, Forage oats, Forage wheat, Swedes, Turnips, Brassica, Lupins, Mustard, Phacelia, and Lucerne.
What does OverseerFM model?
As per the 6.5.0 OverseerFM release update link , the Overseer model now accounts for scenarios where deeper-rooted plants exhibit nitrogen uptake in the bottom 600-1500 mm of soil. This means that under specific conditions (below), there will be a lower nitrogen leaching estimate for farms growing deeper-rooted crops or pasture. For many farms however, this effect will be minimal or non-existent.
To find out more, click here [link to release notes] to read the release notes.
What conditions lead to the deeper-rooted plants effect?
For a deeper-rooted plant to impact a farm’s nitrogen leaching number, the farm must meet all the following criteria:
- The farm has a crop or pasture species present that are estimated to have roots that have grown lower than 600 mm into the soil (i.e., there is a deeper-rooted crop or pasture).
- Where the deeper-rooted crop or pasture species is present, it cannot consume sufficient nutrients from the top 600 mm of soil (e.g., little or no fertiliser applied to a high yielding crop).
- There are nutrients available in the bottom 600-1500 mm of soil for uptake by the deeper-rooted crop or pasture (e.g., high mineral nitrogen in the soil before planting a crop).
How do I know if my farm is affected by use of deeper-rooted plants?
If you’d like to know if your previous or current farm analyses are impacted by deeper-rooted plants, you can simply look at the impact information of your analyses for the 6.5.0 update release in OverseerFM.