Nitrogen use efficiency

Nitrogen use efficiency
Nitrogen management strategies that respond to the triple challenge of food security, environmental impacts, and climate change

Context

More than half the world’s people are nourished by crops grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. There is a growing awareness among both agricultural and environmental stakeholder groups that nitrogen use is both essential and problematic. Too little N means lower crop productivity, poor human nutrition and soil degradation. Too much N leads to environmental pollution and its concomitant threats to agricultural productivity, food security, ecosystem health, human health and economic prosperity. This growing awareness, and stimulated by ongoing advances in agricultural technology, undoubtedly will lead to smarter knowledge-based nitrogen management globally [1].

Question

One of our clients, an international company active in fertilizers, requested Creax to get a good understanding of the recent developments within the field of nitrogen management.

Answer

In this study, the use of multiple sources such as scientific literature, patents, start-up databases and company websites permitted to reveal both state-of-art strategies and early signals of technology developments. As such, this research project resulted in a comprehensive survey of nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) strategies. NUE aims to optimize the fraction of N input that is harvested as product, and it is one of the most effective ways to increase crop productivity while decreasing environmental degradation. Data-driven insights about most recent trends and developments in this domain permitted to select with confidence several focus areas that were interesting for our client. There was particular interest in strategies that could leverage their business in the short term, so the in-depth research focused on those strategies for which there is a significant body of evidence. In addition to technological based insights, the regulatory status of several recent product categories was investigated and high-level insights about market dynamics were obtained. In the end a shortlist of opportunities were identified for which potential partners were identified. References: [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15743

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