Nitrogen-efficient wheats can provide more food with fewer greenhouse gas emissions, new study shows

An international collaboration has discovered and transferred to elite wheat varieties a wild-grass chromosome segment that causes roots to secrete natural inhibitors of nitrification, offering a way to dial back on heavy fertilizer use for wheat and to reduce the crop’s nitrogen leakage into waterways and air, while maintaining or raising its productivity and grain quality, says a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.