The element nitrogen is a double-edged sword.
The element nitrogen is a double-edged sword. It is essential for growing plants and feeding people, but it is also a leading cause of pollution across the world. Only by using nitrogen more sustainably can the positive and harmful effects of nitrogen be balanced.
Xia (Emma) Liang, a member of the American Society of Agronomy, studies nitrogen loss during food production.
Liang and her team created a framework that accurately measures nitrogen loss across a wide variety of crops and food products. She recently presented their research at the virtual 2020 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting.
“This framework can capture the environmental impacts and societal costs of nitrogen losses,” Liang explains. “This allows us to potentially provide information to inform consumers, producers, and policymakers.”
The team hopes this research will help make major progress in making agricultural systems across the world more sustainable, less polluting, and more profitable.
Read more at American Society Of Agronomy
Image: To measure greenhouse gas emissions from manure application on a celery farm, researchers covered some of the plants with chambers that would trap the gases. The metal border is the base of the chamber. Credit: Shu Kee Lam
