Nitrogen Crisis

Allan Downie’s blog post

The nitrogen crisis: what are the solutions?

An expert group gathers to discuss this elemental problem. The John Innes Centre’s Allan Downie reports on problems and progress.

http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/2015/11/the-nitrogen-crisis-what-are-the-solutions/

Nitrogen Crisis Meeting, Sept. 2015

Ncrisis_logos2

Tackling the nitrogen crisis; what are the solutions?
Oxford Martin School, 18th September 2015. 

Meeting overview
A broad, discipline-spanning symposium examining the nitrogen crisis, its severity and how we measure and monitor it. Innovations to alleviate the nitrogen crisis were explored; from changing agricultural practice, legume breeding, nodulation of cereals, cereal nitrogen use efficiency, through to engineering solutions such as expressing nitrogenase in mitochondria, synthetic symbioses and exploiting natural endophytes. How these relate to social and regulatory aspects of changing agricultural practice in both developing and well-developed countries was considered.

Themes considered
1. How bad is the nitrogen crisis?
2. Agricultural practices, their social and economic context
3. Engineering and natural solutions
4. Nitrogen use efficiency

Speakers
Jean-Michel Ané (USA), Ray Dixon (UK), David Fowler (UK), Alfy Gathorne-Hardy (UK), Ken Giller (The Netherlands), Charles Godfray (UK), Simon Griffiths (UK), John Howieson (Australia), Giles Oldroyd (UK), John Peters (USA), Philip Poole (UK), Jorg Schumacher (UK), Mark Sutton (UK), Michael Udvardi (USA)

Further information; alison.east@plants.ox.ac.uk

Nitrogen crisis-related publications and links

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