Improving the effective use of nitrogen on major field crops across the globe: a new paradigm

Description

Foundational concepts for characterization of nitrogen (N) nutrition in field crops are necessary to define true N gains in crops under different genotype-environment-management (GxExM) scenarios. A study (Ciampitti and Lemaire, 2022) emphasized the requirement to redefine N use (herein termed as effective use of N term) and provided new insights into crop yield improvement based on improving crop N status over time. Future breeding progress is needed to combine two strategies by linking progress in both biomass (in terms of harvestable organs) and yield with progress in intrinsic N uptake capacity, i.e. the capacity of the crop to capture soil N resources. This chapter outlines a prior N framework for targeting optimal N supply and proposes the utilization of a new approach to shift our current paradigm to more directly target necessary N gains in crop improvement.

Table of contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 The traditional paradigm of nitrogen use efficiency for crop improvement
• 3 A more functional nitrogen indicator for evaluating different genotypeenvironmentmanagement scenarios
• 4 Interactions of plant nitrogen status with other nutrients and water
• 5 Potential use of the nitrogen nutrition index across genotypeenvironmentmanagement scenarios
• 6 A retrospective analysis of true gains of nitrogen over time for major field crops
• 7 A path forward for enhancing nitrogen uptake and improve yields
• 8 Using the nitrogen nutrition index for a holistic approach to defining crop nitrogen status
• 9 Conclusion and future trends
• 10 Acknowledgements
• 11 References