New partnership to optimise use of nitrogen in cereal crops

Researchers from India and the United Kingdom have come together to develop new cereal crop varieties that use nitrogen efficient that in turn will reduce greenhouse emissions and make farming more profitable and sustainable.
The partnership will explore natural variations of cereals and basic research in model plants to deliver new varieties of cereals with enhanced nitrogen use efficiency, according to a release from city-based ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics).
With funding of GBP 10 million through the Newton Bhabha Fund, UK; Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC), UK; and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of the Government of India, four new Virtual Joint Centres in Agricultural Nitrogen will be created.

These are delivered in partnership with BBSRC, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the DBT. The Centres comprise multiple research organisations in India and the UK, with each centre receiving a co-investment of approximately GBP 2.5 million, it said.
The Cambridge-India Network for Translational Research in Nitrogen (CINTRIN), one of the four centres, is led by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in the UK and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India.
It also brings together the Department of Plant Sciences and Sainsbury laboratory, University of Cambridge, the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), India, ADAS UK Ltd. And agri-IT specialist KisanHub, the release said.

"The overarching aim of CINTRIN is to improve not only the income and livelihood of farmers by reducing the inputs cost, but also to save the environment by minimising the negative impacts of excessive use of fertilisers," said Rajeev Gupta, Principal Scientist, ICRISAT, who is leading the Indian team of CINTRIN.
"The natural variation for nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) will be studied in diverse germplasm of wheat, sorghum, pearl millet and foxtail millet. The findings will be applied to develop new breeding lines with enhanced NUE. CINTRIN will also use model plants such as Arabidopsis and Brachypodium for basic research which will be translated into crops in the future," Gupta said.

NIAB Director of Genetics and Breeding Dr Alison Bentley explains: "The CINTRIN partners will translate developmental biology research into innovation in nitrogen use by Indian farmers, by connecting developmental research, crop breeding, agritechnology and extension work. This will be enhanced by easily accessible data-driven methods of technology transfer, developed by India and UK-based company, KisanHub".