Here is some good news for farmers and environmentalists. Saving on cost of fertiliser use and damage due to pollution from leftover fertilisers in crop lands will soon be a reality.
Indian scientists have identified certain genes and traits in rice crop which help in boosting both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) use efficiency (PUE and NUE) which are essential in agriculture practises.
The wastage of precious nutrients from fertilisers, manures and organic wastes due to poor use efficiency of crops is a global problem causing nutrient pollution and threatening the sustainability of our planet.
India is a signatory to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022), the target 7 of which mandates countries to halve their nutrient waste from all sources by 2030.
The research was carried out by Bhumika Madan and led by Prof. Nandula Raghuram, founder-Head of the Centre for Sustainable Nitrogen and Nutrient Management (CSNNM), School of Biotechnology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi.
The biotechnologists compared three popular rice varieties grown in different parts of the country for both NUE and PUE and found 12 common ‘phenotypic’ traits and 5 common genes for both, facilitating crop improvement.
They also found that CR Dhan 301 from Eastern coastal India has the highest NUE and PUE, followed by Panvel1 and Samba Mahsuri (BPT 5204) from Western coastal and Southern India respectively.
The study has just been published as a research article in the international peer reviewed journal, ‘Plants’ and can be accessed at: www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/13/18/2567.
The Scientists had published a month ago which showed the advantages of screening a dozen rice varieties exclusively for nitrogen use efficiency. Finding one variety for both N and P use efficiencies is a great advance, as farmers need all efficiencies to be delivered together in the same crop variety, the publication said..
In the present study, the novel finding that over half of all the phenotypic traits are common for PUE and NUE is a welcome and encouraging development for anyone interested in crop improvement for sustainable agriculture.
Nitrogen and Phosphorus (N and P) are the largest and most expensive components of NPK fertilisers and cereals consume most of them in India. NUE or PUE in cereals is measured as the grain yield per kg of N/P fertiliser supplied.
India spends about 2 lakh crores on NPK fertilisers, most of which being government subsidy. “Only 25-30% of the applied fertilisers are converted into harvested outputs, while the rest are lost to air and water pollution, affecting our health, biodiversity and climate change threatening our planet” says Prof. Raghuram.
“While some of this wastage can be reduced by legume-based crop rotations and better manure management, we must also undertake genetic improvement of the crop for nutrient use efficiency. India being a centre of origin of rice biodiversity, we have tens of thousands of rice varieties and our findings help in developing better cultivars through selection and breeding”, he added.
“We focused on rice, as it is the highest fertiliser-consuming crop in India, but the fact is that no crop is optimised yet for both NUE and PUE”, says Bhumika Madan.
“Most scientists focus on either NUE or PUE, but ultimately, we need both efficiencies in the same crop variety, as we found in CR Dhan301. The common traits and genes we found for both NUE and PUE will also boost similar efforts in other crops”, she added.
The work was funded by the University in Delhi and the United Kingdom Research and Innovation under its flagship Global Challenges Research Fund for the project on ‘South Asian Nitrogen Hub’.
| 
