SUSTAINABLE NITROGEN MANAGEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN AGROECOSYSTEMS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Highlights

● There is huge potential for improvement of nitrogen management in Australia.

● N management should incorporate environmental, social and economic sustainability.

● Agronomic, ecological and socioeconomic approaches and efforts are needed.

Abstract

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient that supports life, but excess N in the human-environment system causes multiple adverse effects from the local to the global scale. Sustainable N management in agroecosystems, therefore, has become more and more critical to address the increasing concern over food security, environmental quality and climate change. Australia is facing a serious challenge for sustainable N management due to its emission-intensive lifestyle (high level of animal-source foods and fossil fuels consumption) and its diversity of agricultural production systems, from extensive rainfed grain systems with mining of soil N to intensive crop and animal production systems with excessive use of N. This paper reviews the major challenges and future opportunities for making Australian agrifood systems more sustainable, less polluting and more profitable.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Australian agroecosystems / reactive nitrogen / sustainable development

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by an Early Career Researcher grant of the University of Melbourne, Australian Research Council Research Hub for Innovative Nitrogen Fertilisers and Inhibitors (IH200100023).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xia Liang, Helen Suter, Shu Kee Lam, Charlie Walker, Roya Khalil, and Deli Chen declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2022. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)