Lechner Hop Farm: Economic Benefits with Agrocote®

Last year, ICL carried out a fertilization trial with Agrocote on the Lechner hop farm in Ilmendorf, near Ingolstadt/Hallertau. A standard fertilization with calcium ammonium nitrate was compared with two variants with Agrocote with a duration of 2-3 months. One variant was carried out with an application rate of 80% N, while the second contained 100% N.

Christoph Lechner describes the location as problematic because the water-holding capacity of the soil is very low due to the high sand content and rainfall has been very irregular in recent years. Hailstorms and heavy rainfall are also frequent. During the growing season, droughts are common. This is why the company decided to install irrigation hoses a few years ago.

This year was extreme again, as it rained for a long time in the spring. The first application of fertilizer worked well, but there were problems with the second application. As it didn’t rain until August, the fertilizer couldn’t dissolve after it had been mounded up and it took a long time for the second application to dissolve through irrigation. This is where the advantage of coated fertilizers became very clear: if the coated granules were incorporated early, the fertilizer grains could dissolve with the residual moisture from the spring, whatever the weather conditions, and then benefit from the irrigation hoses that had been inserted.

Would fertilization with coated Agrocote be an option for your farm, even if it does not result in an increase in yield?