Removing the Nitrogen Bottleneck in the World's Food Soupply

Jul 08, 2022

By Marc Arakaki

A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researcher is a part of a team that developed a synthetic way to transform nitrogen into a bioavailable form that could allow for the production of ammonia fertilizer at a much lower cost and ultimately lead to greater food production across the globe. Though nitrogen is inexhaustible in the atmosphere, scientists say creating enough bioavailable forms of nitrogen remains one of the most crucial bottlenecks in Earth's ecosystem.

UH Mānoa Department of Chemistry Professor Emeritus Roger Cramer and 13 researchers from universities in Japan have developed a synthetic way to transform nitrogen into a bioavailable form, which only happens naturally during lightning storms and by a type of microorganism called diazotrophs. The research was published in Nature on July 6.

"This research is an essential step toward removing the nitrogen bottleneck on the world's food supply," Cramer said.

Cramer and fellow researchers have discovered a method that uses a synthetic metal-sulfur cluster, and have shown that the iron atoms can capture a nitrogen molecule and create a bioavailable form of nitrogen under specific treatment conditions.

Click here to see more...

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”