We probably did not actually assess the ways in which management might affect nitrogen stress in organically grown corn so much as instead assessing how management would affect drought stress response. It was that sort of year. The drought was an unfortunate surprise, but field histories in two of the fields strongly suggested that nitrogen stress would be present. Perhaps the organic matter levels and vigor of soil biota was such that in these soils variations in recent nitrogen additions will be buffered.
From this single season of evaluation, it appears that T-22 inoculation does not clearly increase yield in organically grown corn during a significant drought event. These data are however noisy and limited, so continued research is called for to further assess the use of Trichoderma in organically grown corn. With more replications perhaps the trend of increasing yield via T-22 inoculation will become clearer. Similarly, with more replication we may have been able to assess how T-22 inoculation affects individual varieties, conclusions we are not comfortable making from these limited data.
