Engineering Nitrogen Utilization in Crop Plants

Description

This book discusses and addresses the rapidly increasing world population demand for food, which is expected to double by 2050. To meet these demands farmers will need to improve crop productivity, which relies heavily on nitrogen (N) fertilization. Production of N fertilizers, however, consumes huge amounts of energy and the loss of excess N fertilizers to leaching results in the pollution of waterways and oceans. Therefore, increasing plant nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is essential to help farmers produce more while conserving the environment. This book assembles some of the best work of top researchers from academic and industrial institutions in the area of NUE and provides valuable insight to scholars and researchers by its comprehensive discussion of current and future strategies to improve NUE through genetic manipulation. This book should also be highly valuable to policy makers, environmentalists, farmers, biotechnology executives, and to the hard-core researchers working in the lab. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Developing Crop Varieties with Improved Nutrient-Use Efficiency (David A. Lightfoot)....Pages 1-11 Front Matter ....Pages 13-13 Improving Nitrogen Use Efficient in Crop Plants Using Biotechnology Approaches (Perrin H. Beatty, Allen G. Good)....Pages 15-35 Transcription Factor-Based Genetic Engineering to Increase Nitrogen Use Efficiency (Yoshiaki Ueda, Shuichi Yanagisawa)....Pages 37-55 Modeling Plant Metabolism: Advancements and Future Capabilities (Margaret N. Simons-Senftle, Debolina Sarkar, Costas D. Maranas)....Pages 57-76 Molecular Targets for Improvement of Crop Nitrogen Use Efficiency: Current and Emerging Options (Vikas Kumar Mandal, Narendra Sharma, Nandula Raghuram)....Pages 77-93 From Arabidopsis to Crops: The Arabidopsis QQS Orphan Gene Modulates Nitrogen Allocation Across Species (Seth O’Conner, Andrea Neudorf, Wenguang Zheng, Mingsheng Qi, Xuefeng Zhao, Chuanlong Du et al.)....Pages 95-117 Front Matter ....Pages 119-119 Tackling Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Cereal Crops Using High-Throughput Phenotyping (Nicholas John Sitlington Hansen, Darren Plett, Bettina Berger, Trevor Garnett)....Pages 121-139 Nitrogen Partitioning and Remobilization in Arabidopsis Under Sufficient and Depleted Conditions (Adel Zayed, Robert Crosby)....Pages 141-160 Field Testing for Improved Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Corn—From Whole-Plant Physiology to Agroecosystem Scales (Kevin R. Kosola)....Pages 161-172 Legume Nitrogen Utilization Under Drought Stress (V. Castañeda, E. Gil-Quintana, A. Echeverria, EM. González)....Pages 173-184 Exploiting Genetic Variability of Root Morphology as a Lever to Improve Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Oilseed Rape (Julien Louvieaux, Hugues De Gernier, Christian Hermans)....Pages 185-206 Genetic Improvement of Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Oilseed Rape (Andreas Stahl, Rod Snowdon)....Pages 207-232 The Importance of Organic Nitrogen Transport Processes for Plant Productivity and Nitrogen Use Efficiency (Mechthild Tegeder, Molly Perchlik)....Pages 233-253 New Screening Strategies for Dinitrogen Fixation in Soybean (Raphael Lemes Hamawaki, Curtis Wolf, Stella K. Kantartzi)....Pages 255-268 Back Matter ....Pages 269-273