Nitrogen contribution in plants: recent agronomic approaches to improve nitrogen use efficiency

Abstract

Modern agriculture has a major impact on natural resources in terms of exploitation and use. Land and water resources are being exploited by ever-increasing population pressures. High nutritional inputs such as mineral nitrogen (N) fertilization are required to achieve higher and sustainable yields. Although crop production depends on N fertilizers, the excessive and inefficient use of N inputs is a worldwide issue that increases production costs and pollutes the environment. Strategies to increase N use efficiency (NUE) would be the key to reducing these negative impacts by improved agronomic practices. To develop effective management approaches, it would be helpful to understand the effect of N on various aspects of crop growth, development, and physiological processes in crops. In this review, we highlighted recent agronomic progress made to improve NUE by adopting primarily agronomic practices that may be more environmentally and economically beneficial, including site-specific-nitrogen management, enhanced use efficiency of fertilizer resources, conservation approaches, drip fertigation, crop modeling, and precision agriculture. The first section discusses the morphological and physiological effects of N on crops while in the second section, agronomic strategies for growing crops with higher NUE are discussed.

Keywords:

• Agronomic management
• conservation agriculture
• crop modeling
• nitrogen use efficiency
• precision agriculture
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.