Our Work
Welcome to the Maharjan Soil and Nutrient Management Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Panhandle Research, Extension and Education Center located in Scottsbluff.
Current research and extension effort involves soil conservation and soil fertility management in Nebraska’s major crops such as corn, winter wheat, sugar beet, dry edible beans and emerging crops such as millet, mint and field peas. Other areas of focus are precision agriculture and monitoring and managing greenhouse gas emissions, ammonia volatilization, and nitrate leaching from agricultural fields.
One of our primary goals has been to revise and prepare robust fertility recommendations since recommendations for many crops were developed long ago or are non-existent.
Growing calls and the need for sustainable agriculture have brought deserved attention to soil and to efforts towards improving or maintaining soil health.
Inefficient crop utilization of nutrients can reduce producers' profitability, and nutrient loss from agricultural land has adverse ecological impacts on environmental quality.
Soil degradation, nutrient depletion, and declining crop productivity are significant in agriculture, particularly in a semi-arid region such as the Nebraska Panhandle.
Optimization of nitrogen (N) management in agriculture is key to addressing economic and environmental issues associated with N fertilization. Therefore, it is important to be able to detect variability in crop N status within a field.
Started in 1912, the Knorr-Holden Plot near Scottsbluff is perhaps the world’s oldest irrigated continuous corn research plot. It has over 100-year-old manure and urea treatment plots under furrow-irrigated continuous maize.
