Managing the microbes - the key to solving the global nitrogen crisis

Experts from the UK and Brazil have joined forces to address the challenges and opportunities for agricultural nitrogen science in Florianopolis, Brazil. In the first meeting of its kind 24 leading experts from the UK and Brazil came together to find practical, low cost solutions that make more effective use of nitrogen (N) inputs in agriculture, while attempting to decrease N pollution losses to the environment either to the atmosphere or through the soil. NUCLEUS led by Sacha Mooney, Professor of Soil Physics in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham and UBNFC led by Ray Dixon, Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the John Innes Centre focus on improving nitrogen use efficiency from both the agronomic and biological perspectives. The workshop was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC) via the Newton Fund. Professor Mooney said: "While our two centres are following different approaches, the potential synergies are clear. In NUCLEUS we have shown that combinations of natural soil amendments and leguminous trees planted between crops have the capacity to provide similar quantities of nitrogen to that from artificial fertilizers. For important non-leguminous crops like maize and rice, UBNFC are isolating second generation bacterial inoculants that have great potential for supplying fixed N to plants when added to soil - although this is yet to be tested in the field." - "We have developed new plans to exchange ideas and scientists in the coming year to test this combination of approaches.