A University of Alberta professor has found a genetic source for improved nitrogen use efficiency in plants.
However, he thinks it will take years to produce improved commercial crop varieties.
Allen Good, a professor of biological sciences, told farmers at Crop Production Week in Saskatoon that the gene his team identified has promise, but nitrogen use efficiency in plants is a complex process.
More than half the nitrogen applied to crops in many parts of the world is lost through volatization, leaching and surface runoff. This presents a wasted expenditure by farmers and creates environmental problems, such as dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Prairie farmers have better nitrogen use efficiency than the world average because they have adopted banded fertilizer placement, extended crop rotations, reduced or zero tillage and high yielding canola cultivars.
However, nitrogen fertilizer remains a key input cost and producers and the environment would benefit if plants could be manipulated to use it more efficiently.
Good has looked at the gene alanine aminotransferase (AlaAT), an enzyme that affects nitrogen use efficiency. The gene already exists in the plant but is driven to over express AlaAT by a promoter gene.
“We were able to show dramatic increases (in canola),” he said.
The technology was licensed to Arcadia Biosciences and Monsanto.
“We conducted our first field trials with Arcadia Biosciences in 2003-04 in southern California and we were able to reduce fertilizer application rates under those conditions by 40 percent and still maintain yields.”
Field trials continued for several years after that.
Arcadia continues to work on the nitrogen use efficiency technology and has brought in other corporate partners, but so far no material has been brought forward for varietal registration.
“In my early discussion with Monsanto, I said this is a trait that I refer to as tweaky,” Good said.
“It will work sometimes and not work other times and it will not be easy to figure out how to get it to work in a viable commercial sense.”
Researchers and companies have applied the concept to rice, corn, wheat, barley, turf grass and sugar beets, but Good said no papers have been published.
The next generation of genetically modified traits, such as nitrogen use efficiency, will be more difficult to create than the first generation, which were based on the comparatively simple task of adding a novel trait.
“When you start moving into trying to manipulate the internal physiology that nitrogen efficiency requires, you get into a different ball game.”
It will take enormous funding and focused research to get to where real varieties are available, he added.
Good warned that typical Canadian government funding, which usually provides money for four or five years, is inadequate for this type of research. Also, the cost of moving such developments through the regulatory system is unaffordable to all but large biotech companies.
“While I understand the need for regulation, right now, I would argue the Canadian and many of the international regulatory agencies inadvertently are basically helping create a monopoly for the large biotech companies.”
He said an Australian colleague once asked what size of yield bump is needed to pay for the development and approval of these kinds of traits.
“The answer was in the 20 to 30 percent range,” Good said.
“To see that kind of yield bump, you’d not be jumping over the moon, you’d be jumping over Jupiter with excitement. You just do not see those types of improvements.”
