Experts Find How to Reduce Nitrogen Fertilizer Quantity for Growing Grain Crops

A method has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis, to lessen the number of nitrogen fertilizers required to grow cereal crops.

The discovery could help the environment while saving American farmers billions of dollars each year on fertilizer expenses.

Any grass in the Poaceae family that produces edible, starchy seeds is referred to as a cereal crop.

The majority of grains share similar nutritional characteristics; they are high in carbohydrates but relatively low in protein and lacking in calcium and vitamin A by nature.

The cereals that are grown most frequently are rye, wheat, oats, barley, corn (maize), and sorghum.

Cereal Crops

(Photo : Kai Pilger/Unsplash)

Most cereal crops are sold as raw grains (some are frozen or canned) or as components of different food products, as per Britannica.

They are primarily consumed by livestock and poultry as animal feed before being converted into products like meat, dairy, and poultry for human and animal consumption.

Numerous kinds of cereals are used industrially to make a variety of products, including glucose, adhesives, oils, and alcohol.

Native Americans first domesticated corn, or maize (Zea mays), in the Western Hemisphere, and early explorers later brought it to Europe.

In all of Asia, rice (Oryza sativa), the second-largest cereal crop, is a food staple.

Contrary to Wheat, one of the earliest domesticated grains and a major cereal crop, Triticum species.

Only wheat is used more frequently than rye (Secale cereale) for bread production. Additionally, it is utilized in other bakery goods and distilled spirits, particularly whiskey.

Almost everywhere with temperate climates grows oats (Avena sativa), but it is most popular in North America, Canada, and Europe.

Temperate climates also support the cultivation of barley (Hordeum vulgare). Not particularly rich soils are required.

The majority of barley is used as animal feed, but it's also the origin of the malt used in the production of alcoholic beverages, including beer.

Also Read: Cereal Crops Brace For Flooding

Less fertilizer for cereal crops

The study was conducted in the laboratory of eminent professor of plant sciences Eduardo Blumwald, who has discovered a new method for cereals to absorb the nitrogen they require to grow, as per ScienceDaily.

By lowering nitrogen pollution-which can pollute water supplies, keep increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and affect human health-the discovery may also benefit the environment.

The research was released in the publication Plant Biotechnology.

Chemical fertilizers are essential to agricultural operations because nitrogen is essential for plant growth.

However, a lot of what is applied is lost and seeps into the groundwater and soil. A viable substitute might be produced as a result of Blumwald's research.

The goal of Blumwald's research is to speed up the nitrogen fixation process, in which soil bacteria convert nitrogen gas found in the atmosphere into ammonium.

Legumes like peanuts and soybeans include root nodules that allow bacteria that fix nitrogen to supply the plants with ammonium.

Because they lack that ability, cereal plants like both wheat and rice must depend on ingesting inorganic nitrogen from soil fertilizers like ammonia and nitrate.

The team led by Blumwald was using chemical screening and genomics to find substances in rice plants that improved the bacteria's capacity to fix nitrogen.

They then determined the chemical production pathways and applied gene editing technology to boost the production of chemicals that induced the growth of biofilms.

Bacteria in those biofilms have improved nitrogen conversion. As a result, both the portion of ammonium in the soil for the plants and the bacteria's ability to fix nitrogen increased.

Other plants might also use the pathway.

The University of California has submitted a pending patent application for the method.

The research paper was produced in part by Dawei Yan, Hiromi Tajima, Howard-Yana Shapiro, Reedmond Fong, Javier Ottaviani, and Bayer Crop Science's Lauren Cline. At Mars Edge, Ottaviani also works as a research assistant.