Laila Puntel
Assistant Professor
Area of Expertise: Soil and Water Sciences
B.S., Agriculture Engineering, National University of Mar del Plata, Balcarce, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010
M.S., Crop Production and Crop Physiology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA, 2012
Ph.D., Crop Production and Crop Physiology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA, 2018
Area of Focus
Soil Fertility and Precision Ag
Other Areas of Focus
- Site-specific crop management
- Cropping systems and simulation models
- Integrated digital agriculture technologies
- Crop ecophysiology
Major Project Activities
Project SENSE
Research Interests
- Site-specific crop management
- Understanding of site-specific variability in crop yield response to inputs via modeling of underlying soil and crop dynamics
- Long-term nutrient management effects on soil and crop dynamics, productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability
- Yield forecasting
- Digital agriculture technology and data-driven crop recommendation systems
- Nutrient management for yield and quality – in particular wheat and barley
Extension Interests
- Precision ag strategies for crop management
- On farm research
- New agriculture technologies training
- Data interpretation and use
Teaching Interests
- Site-specific crop management
- Mechanisms underlying variability of crop yield response to inputs (e.g. nitrogen)
- Digital ag technology
- Data stewardship and open source software
- Entrepreneurship opportunities in agriculture fields
Courses Taught
- Site-Specific Crop Management, PLAS/MSYM/AGEN 431 (fall semesters)
- Spatial Variability in Soils, AGRO 831 (distance course, spring semesters, even-numbered years)
Publications
Google Scholar publication list
- Puntel Laila A., Pagani Agustin, and Archontoulis Sotirios V. Development of a nitrogen recommendation tool for corn considering static and dynamic variables. European Journal of Agronomy 105 (2019): 189-199.
- Puntel Laila A., Sawyer John E., Castellano Michael J., Moore Kenneth J., Peter Thorburn, Andrew VanLoocke, Emily Heaton and Archontoulis Sotirios V. 2018. A system modeling approach to forecast corn economic optimum nitrogen rate. Frontiers in Science 9:486-496.
- Raziel A. Ordóñeza, Michael Castellano, Jerry L. Hatfield, Matthew J. Helmers, Mark Licht, Matt Liebman, Ranae Dietzel, Rafael Martinez-Feria, Javed Iqbal, Laila A. Puntel, Carolina Cordova, Kati Togliatti, Emily Wright, and Sotirios V. Archontoulis. Corn and soybean root front velocity and maximum depth in the Midwest USA. Field Crop Research. 215:122-131.
- Togliatti Kaitlin, Archontoulis V. Sotirios, Dietzel Ranae, Puntel A. Laila and VanLoocke Andy. How does inclusion of weather forecasting impact in-season crop model predictions? Field Crop Research. 214: 261-272
- Puntel Laila A., Sawyer John E., Barker Daniel W., Dietzel Ranae, Poffenbarger Hanna, Castellano Michael, Moore Kenneth J., Thorburn Peter and Archontoulis Sotirios V. 2016. Modeling Long Term Corn Yield Response to Nitrogen Rate and Crop Rotation. Frontiers in Science. 7:1630, 2016