CSS 415/515 Soil Fertility Management

COLLEGE:

College of Agricultural Sciences

DEPARTMENT:

Department of Crop and Soil Science

COURSE:

CSS 415/515 Soil Fertility Management, 3 hours credit.
3 one-hour lecture and discussion periods per week.

INSTRUCTOR:

Dr. Neil W. Christensen, Professor of Soil Science
3059 Agriculture & Life Science
Phone: 737-5733

DESCRIPTION:

Management of plant nutrients in agronomic systems for economic response and environmental protection; diagnosis of nutrient availability and prediction of crop response to fertilizers; interactions between nutrient response and chemical, physical, and biological properties of soils.

PREREQ: CSS 315 Nutrient Management and Cycling (or equiv.)
RECOMMENDED: courses in statistics, chemistry, and plant physiology.

REFERENCES:

Soil Fertility and Fertilizers, 6^th ed. Havlin, J.L., J.D. Beaton, Tisdale, S.L., and W.L. Nelson. 1999. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, 2^nd ed. Marschner, Horst. 1995. Academic Press Inc. San Diego, CA

Principles of Plant Nutrition, 4^th ed. Mengel, K. and E.A. Kirkby. 1987. International Potash Institute, Worblaufen-Bern, Switzerland.

Soil Testing and Plant Analysis, 3^rd. ed. Westerman, R.L. (ed.) 1990. Soil Science Society of America, Inc., Madison, WI

Assigned readings from agronomy and soil science literature.

AUDIENCE:

Senior level undergraduates and beginning graduate students in Botany and Plant Pathology, Crop Science, Environmental Science, Horticulture, and Soil Science.

OBJECTIVES:

Upon successfully completing the course, students will be able to:

Identify the major chemical, physical and biological factors affecting availability and uptake of the essential plant nutrients.

Use and interpret soil and plant analysis data to predict response to applied nutrients.

Read and understand soil fertility and plant nutrition literature as related to crop production and environmental quality.

Design on-farm nutrient management systems that are economically and environmentally sustainable.

PHILOSOPHY:

Responsible and effective natural resource managers have the capacity to think about, to understand, and to generate insight into systems composed of interdependent relationships. To reach this level, students must develop their ability to see second, third and higher order consequences of management decisions. They must increase their capacity for understanding short- and long-term impact of nutrient application. They must hone their intuition for the dynamics of processes controlling nutrient availability and plant growth.

My goal is to help students move beyond the stage of simply assimilating facts and gaining understanding to one of building understanding. The process of building understanding is inherently active and creative and can be taught by having students re-create the insight, re-trace the steps, re-build the mental model, and re-live the experience that the originator went through.

(Concepts and terms loosely paraphrased from "Five Learning Processes: The Role of Systems Thinking and the STELLAŽ Software in Building World Citizens for Tomorrow" by High Performance Systems, Inc., http://www.hps-inc.com/ )

EVALUATION:

Assignments^† and Class Participation	30%
One (1) one-hour MIDTERM EXAM	35%
One (1) two-hour, comprehensive FINAL EXAM	35%

^† Students enrolled in CSS 515 are required to develop and conduct a research project on a subject of their choosing. Students will report their findings in a term paper and a 25-minute presentation during the last two weeks of the term.

Course Syllabus/Description