Effects of Nitrogen on Sunflower Productivity in the Big Horn Basi

The production of high quality confectionary sunflower seeds and sunflower seed oil is important in the production of this crop. Very little research has been done that looked at and documented the effect of nitrogen on sunflower hybrids, oil quality and confectionary seed quality components. Therefor studies were conducted in 2014 and 2015 to determine the effects of nitrogen rates and hybrids on sunflower growth, yield, oil content, oil quality, and confectionary seed quality and size on sunflowers being grown in the Big Horn Basin.;Results from the study showed that the measured sunflower growth parameters and seed yields were not affected by the different rates of applied nitrogen fertilization. However, the different sunflower hybrids did impact the measured growth parameters and yield data. Sunflower plant height was inconsistent amongst hybrids throughout the growing seasons, however, in general, the two confection seed hybrids matured faster than the oil seed hybrid with hybrid Sierra maturing the slowest. Harvest weight results were also inconstant amongst the hybrids in 2014 and 2015. The head diameter measurement showed a significant difference amongst hybrids in both 2014 and 2015 where oil seed hybrids Defender Plus and Sierra had the largest head diameters of 52.8 and 56.1 centimeters in 2014 and 59.2 and 29.4 centimeters respectively in 2015. In regards to seed yields hybrids D9512 and Defender Plus were consistently yielding the highest whereas oilseed hybrid X9452 was consistently the lowest yielding sunflower hybrid. The oil quality, when looking at the proportion of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, were not significantly affected by varying rates of applied nitrogen fertilizer. However, there were a few individual fatty acids that were effected by nitrogen rates but these components contributed very little to the overall quality of the oil. The oil content percentage was significantly affected by nitrogen application in 2015 but not in 2014. The results show a higher oil content percentage of 33.5% at the lowest rate of applied nitrogen (84 kg N/hectare) and the lowest oil content percentage of 30.0% at the highest rate of applied nitrogen (336 kg N/hectare). These results are relatively consist with other studies done on this subject. The oil quality and content did differ between hybrids, in regards to quality we would expect this as two of our hybrids were high oleic hybrids and the other was a high linoleic hybrid. The oil content percentage was inconstant however in general hybrid Sierra seamed to produce the lowest oil content while hybrid Defender Plus and X9452 had higher oil content percentages. The confectionary sunflower seed quality was not impacted by nitrogen application rates or hybrid.;Results from this study show that sunflower production in the Big Horn Basin of both confectionary seeds and oil seeds under irrigation can be a viable market for producers to enter. Results also suggest that a lower rate of nitrogen fertilizer could be used to obtain competitively high yields as well as a high quality product in regards to confectionary seeds and oil quality and content.