50 year trends in nitrogen use efficiency of world cropping systems: the relationship between yield and nitrogen input to cropland

By L. Lassaletta, G. Billen, Bruna Grizzetti, J. Anglade, J. Garnier. 2014

1,074 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Nitrogen (N) is crucial for crop productivity. However, nowadays more than half of the N added to cropland is lost to the environment, wasting the resource, producing threats to air, water, soil and biodiversity, and generating greenhouse gas emissions. Based on FAO data, we have reconstructed the trajectory followed, in the past 50 years, by 124 countries in terms of crop yield and total nitrogen inputs to cropland (manure, synthetic fertilizer, symbiotic fixation and atmospheric deposition). During the last five decades, the response of agricultural systems to increased nitrogen fertilization has evolved differently in the different world countries. While some countries have improved their agro-environmental performances, in others the increased fertilization has produced low agronomical benefits and higher environmental losses. Our data also suggest that, in general, those countries using a higher proportion of N inputs from symbiotic N fixation rather than from synthetic fertilizer have a better N use efficiency.

Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d733bcb486e563239de8268eeab2466eb90ffde6

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Citations in the corpus

Future agricultural phosphorus demand according to the shared socioeconomic pathways (2018, background): “Furthermore IMAGE-DPPS does not explicitly account for the limitation of other nutrients such as nitrogen and potassium, whose input could also stimulate crop yields (e.g. Lassaletta et al., 2014; Mogollón et al., 2018).”
Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future (2016, background): “For progress in nitrogen use efficiency in some developed countries in recent years, see Lassaletta et al. (2014).”
Drivers of changes in agricultural intensity in Europe (2016, background): “, 2015), our study suggests yields increased mainly due to a better nitrogen management (Lassaletta et al., 2014).”
Nitrogen use in the global food system: past trends and future trajectories of agronomic performance, pollution, trade, and dietary demand (2016, methodology): “Indeed, the use of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers has increased eight-fold and now represents more than half the total direct input of N to cropland (Fowler et al 2013, Lassaletta et al 2014a).”