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SEMINAR: Soil&Water Seminar, Sept19:

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Soil&Water Seminar, Sept19: : "Nitrogen - future challenges for agricultural science" Other events...
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Title: “Nitrogen – future challenges for agricultural science”

ABSTRACT: Fertilisers currently represent 15-20 per cent of the cost of production wheat grain. This cost will rise with the shortage of raw materials used to make fertiliser, the increasing costs in energy to mine and produce fertiliser, raising concerns as to the cost effectiveness of fertilisers, as observed following the spike in fertiliser prices in 2008/09. Over use of N can lead to eutrophication of waterways and to greater release of nitrous oxide, a key greenhouse gas, through unnecessary cycling of N through the nitrification and denitrification processes known to produce nitrous oxide. While most understand the concept of direct nitrous oxide loss, less is understood about the concept of indirect nitrous oxide release that is presumed to occur after fertiliser N leaves point of application on farm. Loss mechanisms that are factored into the indirect estimate N2O release include ammonia volatilisation, runoff of mineral and organic N and nitrate leached into groundwater. Because of the difficulties in determining indirect nitrous oxide emission these are likely to be based on estimates of on-farm N efficiency. For productivity including profitability, and improved environment outcomes the challenge is to better tailor fertiliser N inputs to ensure that soil plus fertiliser inputs more closely match crop demand for N. The talk will discuss new knowledge on a key nitrogen transformation that may have implications for managing N. It will consider recent developments in characterising soil organic matter that are expected to provide more robust estimates of net N mineralisation. The challenge is get new approaches for assessing properties of soil organic matter used as part of routine soil testing. In the case of N loss processes, a challenge is to produce simple calculators
Speaker(s) Ian Fillery, CSIRO
Location Ag Lecture Theatre (G.013)
Contact Ursula Salmon <[email protected]>
Start Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:00
End Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:45
Submitted by Ursula Salmon <[email protected]>
Last Updated Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:11
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