Texas A&M AgriLife researchers identify novel approach to minimize nitrogen loss in crops [Video]

KAY LEDBETTERTexas A&M Agri-Life

While agriculture producers apply nitrogen fertilizer to supply nutrients to their crops, they can’t always keep those nutrients in the soil for maximum efficiency, often losing them into the atmosphere or water supply as nitrates and nitrous oxide.

A Texas A&M AgriLife Research team is working to find crop varieties, starting with sorghum, that will minimize that escaped nitrogen, thus reducing input costs for farmers and greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

The project is led by Nithya Rajan, recently named director of the Center for Greenhouse Gas Management in Agriculture and Forestry. Rajan is an AgriLife Research crop physiologist and professor of agronomy and agroecology in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Soil and Crop Sciences.

Five years ago, Rajan initiated the study, “Innovative Sorghum-Based Production Systems with Biological Nitrification Inhibition Property to Enhance Sustainability of Agroecosystems,” funded by the Agriculture and Food Research …