Tag Archives: Dr. Claire Phillips

The Next Wave of Annual Ryegrass Research at USDA

Dan Olk went to the Philippines after earning his PhD at UC Davis, accepting a post-doctoral position with Dr. Ken Cassman at the International Rice Research Institute. They were investigating a global problem with declining rice productivity. “The plants were making use of fertilizer nitrogen but not soil nitrogen, despite the abundance of nitrogen in the soil,” he said. After years of study, they developed a winning strategy. By changing the seasonal management of rice crops and aerating the soil when the crop residues were decomposing, the trapped nitrogen could be released from organic matter. A few years later, a comparable project in Arkansas rice confirmed these results.

After joining the USDA in Iowa in 2001, Dr. Olk’s sleuthing continued to reveal why nutrients get bound up in soil chemistry, for rice growers internationally as well as domestic corn and soybean producers. Beyond his efforts to unleash the potential of organic matter, Olk has also spent many years investigating the use of “humic products” (made from young coal deposits) and their ability to stimulate plant growth.

Humic Products News

The annual ryegrass cover crop project in the Midwest had been rolling along for more than 15 years when it came to Olk’s attention through the work of Dr. Lloyd Murdock, who had been researching the effect of annual ryegrass cover crops on fragipan soils located in Kentucky and Indiana. Olk and his USDA colleague, Dana Dinnes, were presenting a seminar on humic products at the 2016 National No-Till conference. Murdock was receiving an award at the same conference, and that’s when the men met. Murdock was being honored for his decades of research on no till, which shows tremendous potential for boosting agricultural productivity and soil health.

Because fragipan, a nearly impermeable layer of compacted soil, is so pervasive in the US (50 million acres), the USDA has become interested in putting some of its considerable heft behind this new discovery. Dr. Olk will lead a new research project that will pick up where Murdock’s work at the University of Kentucky left off.

If you’re new to the story, here’s a quick summary: Junior Upton, working on his southern Illinois farm for decades, discovered in the 1990s that annual ryegrass added value to marginal land under which fragipan lay. Before trying annual ryegrass as a cover crop, Junior noticed that corn roots would grow down only to the edge of the fragipan layer (18 – 24 “deep) and then deflect sideways, unable to penetrate.

But when corn in the fields covered by annual ryegrass began to outproduce neighboring fields, especially in drier years, he asked agronomist Mike Plumer to help him understand why. Plumer, then at the University of Illinois Extension, came out with digging and soil coring equipment. In four-foot soil pits, they discovered annual ryegrass had exceedingly long roots that grow throughout the winter, even with scarce top growth. That was their first “aha!” The second one, which now has the USDA’s interest, is that ryegrass roots pierced the compacted soil and, thus, gave corn plants more rooting depth, additional nutrients, and moisture. With that encouragement, Junior planted annual ryegrass on his entire farm, year after year, and his soil health continued to improve as row crop yields increased. When he first planted annual ryegrass and began collecting data on corn production, his corn yield was 15 bushels per acre (bu/ac) below the county average. In 2020, after 20 years of continuous no-till and annual ryegrass, the same field produced 30 bu/ac more than the county average.

Murdock heard about Junior’s and Plumer’s discovery and spent more than five years documenting what they were seeing in Junior’s fields, as well as replicating field trials in four other farms in three states. Murdock and his university team also took the experiments into greenhouses and their laboratory to find out more about the chemistry and mechanics – trying to understand why annual ryegrass seemed to degrade fragipan, where nothing practical and sustainable was found to do that in the last half century of research. His lab partner, Dr. Tasios Karathanasis, submersed chunks of fragipan in several different solutions, one of which was a ryegrass extract.

“Within two to four weeks we began to see the ryegrass extract break down the fragipan,” Karathanasis said. They found that annual ryegrass extracts were unique among all test solutions, the only one to affect the integrity of fragipan. It led Murdock and his team to suggest that annual ryegrass roots exude chemicals that loosen the molecular bond in fragipan soil, which ryegrass roots then penetrate and pry away.

And when Murdock added a humic product to his greenhouse tests, the annual ryegrass appeared to have had an even greater impact on fragipan degradation.

Although Olk had met Murdock at the No Till conference in 2016, he had not become much more familiar with the cover crop project, nor the people Murdock worked with, including Junior Upton, Mike Plumer and John Pike, a research agronomist with the University of Illinois. Then in 2021, the USDA lab where Olk works hired Dr. Claire Phillips, who had academic roots in Oregon and who knew about the cover crop work being done on Junior’s farm. In fact, she had met Mike Plumer on his Oregon trips, where he reported on the cover crop project, including Murdock’s research. Phillips made the introductions and the deeper connection to the USDA research team began.

Olk’s research will delve ever deeper into the mystery. In the  5-year project plan written to support the research, Olk said: “Two proposed mechanisms (to demonstrate how fragipan is weakened through annual ryegrass cropping) are that (1) ryegrass growth creates a solution with a high sodium saturation ratio, which disperses fragipan particles; and (2) ryegrass root exudates contain chelating agents, which bind to aluminum and iron molecules in the fragipan, thus helping to disintegrate those cementing agents within the fragipan.”

Another characteristic of fragipan is that it causes overly wet surface conditions early in the growing season, due to poor natural drainage. Later in the season, crops dry up because the shallow water supply evaporates or is absorbed quickly by the crop.

The USDA research will address that issue as well, relying on further field work in a number of Midwest locations, including Junior’s farm in Illinois. Additional lab and greenhouse research will continue in Kentucky, as well as at the USDA labs in Iowa.

Here are more specifics as to the scope of Olk’s research, related specifically to annual ryegrass:

  1. “We will look more closely at the impacts of long-term artificial drainage on soil health.”
  2. “We will study the seasonal soil hydrology of corn-soybean rotations with and without annual ryegrass winter cover crops. We will test the hypotheses that (1) ryegrass growth removes excess soil moisture in springtime, and (2)  it degrades the fragipan sufficiently as to deepen the cash crop plant rooting zone, thereby increasing plant-available soil water later in the growing season.”
  3. “We will determine the chemical composition of fragipans at varying stages of degradation by annual ryegrass and humic product application”
  4. “We will determine the effects of a humic product on root exudates released by annual ryegrass in a hydroponic (lab) system.”

After his research, Murdock said the use of annual ryegrass, as a cover crop, could dramatically change the output of crops on fragipan soils internationally. Olk’s research will evaluate that claim. If proven true, annual ryegrass could become an inexpensive method to add profit to formerly marginal acreage. It would also help to lift a burden that has restricted agriculture on fragipan soils for centuries.

Annual Ryegrass – the Germ Seed of Cover Crop Adoption in the US Part 18

The Next Generation of Innovators in Agriculture

“There is no known abatement of fragipan,” said Dr. Phillips Phillips, a researcher with the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service (ARS) in Ames, Iowa. “Until now, that is,” she added. “Annual ryegrass is a good one, because the chemicals in ryegrass roots break down fragipan.”

Phillips and the congressionally-funded ARS are delving deeper into the mystery of why annual ryegrass has this effect on fragipan. She said there are 50 million acres of agricultural crop land impacted by fragipan in the U.S. alone. “And fragipans are a problem around the globe,” she added.

Phillips and colleagues have proposed work to follow that of Lloyd Murdock, who for the past decade has been documenting and testing the effect of annual ryegrass on fragipan in laboratory settings and in the field. Murdock’s research at the University of Kentucky found that a chemical exudate from ryegrass roots is the reason. Specifically, the chemical excretion from annual ryegrass roots systematically changes the chemistry and make-up of that compacted soil, effectively reducing the presence of fragipan. In the following graph, taken from Murdock’s study, you can see how annual ryegrass reduced the depth of fragipan and increased the depth of healthy soil in five locations in two Midwestern states.

Phillips is leading a five-year study on annual ryegrass’ effects and how to augment them. “A key part of our research will quantify how annual ryegrass, used as a cover crop, affects the amount and availability of water in the field,” she said. “By reducing fragipan, we may be improving drainage and thus expanding the window for planting in the springtime,” Phillips added. “And we think that reducing fragipan will make more soil water available during the summer too, by increasing root depth. We want to measure how much more available soil water is present, and whether the crop can put on more leaf area and experience less water stress.”

John Pike, a former University of Illinois ag research manager, will be monitoring the study in Illinois, funded by the Oregon Ryegrass Seed Growers Commission.

“Mike Plumer and other pioneers showed that annual ryegrass can be really useful in Southern Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky,” Phillips said. “As our weather continues to change, ryegrass could increasingly be seen as a ‘climate adaption tool.’ Specifically,” she explained, “in the Midwest we’re having more rain in the spring, and the rain events are bigger. I hope annual ryegrass’ ability to reduce fragipan will allow more water to be absorbed into the field instead of running off. So, even with more rain, farmers will be able to get into the field in a timely fashion, simply because the water will infiltrate more quickly rather than pooling or creating erosion.”

“Additionally,” Phillips continued, “the month of July in the Midwest is becoming hotter and dryer than in the past. July is when the corn most needs moisture. Annual ryegrass, by helping to create deeper soils may be able to make up for that reduced precipitation.”

Phillips’s colleague, Dr. Dan Olk, will lead complementary studies on how annual ryegrass chemically degrades fragipan. Olk, a biochemist, is an expert on humic products, which are derived from young coal deposits and are thought to enhance plant growth. Hypothetically, humic products used in conjunction with annual ryegrass may have a compounding effect on the decay of fragipan and enhancement of crop health. Phillips and Olk will look at samples of fragipan soil collected from Kentucky and Illinois in different stages of degradation. “We want to find out how the chemistry of fragipan changes at different stages of breaking down, and whether humic products change the rate of fragipan disintegration,” Phillips said.

While Phillips is focused on the science and field work, John Pike will also be sharing the educational aspects of the work with a variety of audience, from field day demonstrations to trade shows. Phillips acknowledged the importance of a team approach to this and other projects. “I’m very thankful to those who are partnering with us in our efforts, like John Pike, the Oregon Ryegrass Commission, and Oregon seed growers, who continue their on the ground support for this work.” She also acknowledged Ryan Hayes, an ARS colleague who works on plant breeding at Oregon State University, where she worked before moving to Iowa in 2020.

Some worry about how the adoption of cover cropping and regenerative agriculture will keep expanding, as a generation of cover crop pioneers like Mike Plumer and Lloyd Murdock retire. It is refreshing to see the next generation of growers and scientists, like Phillips, stepping in to develop the place-specific knowledge necessary to make cover cropping work in a challenging environment where it can have the most benefit.

The Germ Seed of Cover Cropping in the US – Part 14

The Chemical in Ryegrass that Crumbles Fragipan

The hunch that annual ryegrass use was breaking down the fragipan at Junior Upton’s farm in Illinois was like music to Lloyd Murdock’s ears. The University of Kentucky (UK) research team had begun to experiment with different chemicals in the greenhouse and field where he worked at the University of Kentucky’s Princeton farm and in the lab on the main campus.

While they waited for results on field plots of annual ryegrass they planted that year, the UK research team began working with the plant in controlled lab and greenhouse environments. They created extracts made from annual ryegrass roots, as well as from the foliage. “Naturally cemented fragipan clods were placed in a solution of annual ryegrass extract. Thirty days later the size and distribution of the remaining aggregates were determined. As the binding agent in the fragipan is dissolved by the chemical, the fragipan clod begins to fall apart. The greater the dissolution of the binding agent, the smaller the remaining aggregates.  Ag related chemicals were also tested but it was annual ryegrass that demonstrated the most significant ability to dissolve the cementing agents biding the fragipan particles,” he said.

Lloyd also made numerous trips to visit Junior’s farm in those years, to authenticate what they were experiencing there, and to apply what was being gleaned. “We’ve known, for example, that some plants do not exert much pressure at the root tip. Annual ryegrass roots tips, on the other hand, exert a high amount of pressure,” Lloyd said. “So those roots will seek out a crack or weak spot in the fragipan and break through there. It doesn’t take many roots getting through to make a difference. And when corn roots follow those same channels the following year, they’re getting access to nutrition and moisture below the fragipan,” he added. The combination of plant chemistry and root pressure has a dramatic effect on fragipan.

The UK team did replicated trials in five Kentucky and Indiana sites. Below, Table 1 shows, in controlled studies, annual ryegrass reduced the thickness of fragipan significantly at each site, allowing more soil depth for crops.

Dave Fischer is a beef producer from Indiana, and it is his Debois County farm mentioned in the table above. Fisher has planted annual ryegrass on his farm for the past eight years. “When I visited his farm last year, I found that he had lowered the fragipan depth by 14 inches and had annual ryegrass roots 29 inches deep,” Lloyd said.

“Those results floored me,” said Fisher in a video on the project. “But at the same time, I had noticed that these fields seemed to not dry out as fast compared to what they used to and to neighboring fields. We were hanging in there a lot longer during drought periods,” he said. “I would plant it just because of the forage, but the addition of breaking up the fragipan has just been super.”

“I’m more excited about this research than any other project I’ve worked on in my 45 years at the University of Kentucky,” Lloyd said in a University news article, “because it can help so many people. It is something that farmers can work into their operations now to increase their yields.”

As he prepared to retire once again, Lloyd said he has been grateful for the Oregon Commission, and others, whose support was crucial for the UK team’s work on annual ryegrass research. “And it looks like others who have noticed our work are picking up where we’ve left off,” he said with a smile. “Claire Phillips, who received her PhD from Oregon State University and has been a soil scientist for the USDA in Iowa for six years, as well as Dr. Dan Olk and Dr. Dana Dinnes are interested in continuing the work we began. And, likewise, John Pike, an agronomist at Southern Illinois University, has also expressed interest in helping to further the research of fragipan and to continue promoting the use of annual ryegrass as a cover crop.”