Ecological Aspects of Nitrogen Acquisition covers how plants compete for nitrogen in complex ecological communities and the associations plants recruit with other organisms, ranging from soil microbes to arthropods. The book is divided into four sections, each addressing an important set of relationships of plants with the environment and how this impacts the plant’s ability to compete successfully for nitrogen, often the most growth-limiting nutrient. Ecological Aspects of Nitrogen Acquisition provides thorough coverage of this important topic, and is a vitally important resource for plant scientists, agronomists, and ecologists.

Nitrogen is the most important nutrient in agricultural practice because the availability of nitrogen from the soil is generally not enough to support crop yields. To maintain soil fertility, the application of organic matters and crop rotation have been practiced. Farmers can use convenient chemical nitrogen fertilizers to obtain high crop yields. However, the inappropriate use of nitrogen fertilizers causes environmental problems such as nitrate leaching, contamination in groundwater, and the emission of N2O gas. This book is divided into the following four sections: “Ecology and Environmental Aspects of Nitrogen in Agriculture”, “Nitrogen Fertilizers and Nitrogen Management in Agriculture”, “N Utilization and Metabolism in Crops”, “Plant-Microbe Interactions”.

Jointly published with INRA, Paris. This book covers all aspects of the transfer of nitrogen from the soil and air to a final resting place in the seed protein of a crop plant. It describes the physiological and molecular mechanisms of ammonium and nitrate transport and assimilation, including symbiotic nitrogen fixation by the Rhizobiacea. Amino acid metabolism and nitrogen traffic during plant growth and development and details of protein biosynthesis in the seeds are also extensively covered. Finally, the effects of the application of nitrogen fertilisers on plant growth, crop yield and the environment are discussed. Written by international experts in their field, Plant Nitrogen is essential reading for all plant biochemists, biotechnologists, molecular biologists and physiologists as well as plant breeders, agricultural engineers, agronomists and phytochemists.

Nitrogen in the Marine Environment provides information pertinent to the many aspects of the nitrogen cycle. This book presents the advances in ocean productivity research, with emphasis on the role of microbes in nitrogen transformations with excursions to higher trophic levels. Organized into 24 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the abundance and distribution of the various forms of nitrogen in a number of estuaries. This text then provides a comparison of the nitrogen cycling of various ecosystems within the marine environment. Other chapters consider chemical distributions and methodology as an aid to those entering the field. This book discusses as well the enzymology of the initial steps of inorganic nitrogen assimilation. The final chapter deals with the philosophy and application of modeling as an investigative method in basic research on nitrogen dynamics in coastal and open-ocean marine environments. This book is a valuable resource for plant biochemists, microbiologists, aquatic ecologists, and bacteriologists.

Nitrogen is an essential primary nutrient for plant growth and development. With the demand for high growth and yield of plants and the depletion of organics in soil, nitrogen availability in soil has become insufficient. This simple and comprehensive book covers the important and current information regarding rice plant biology and nitrogen metabo

Nitrogen in the Environment: Sources, Problems, and Management is the first volume to provide a holistic perspective and comprehensive treatment of nitrogen from field, to ecosystem, to treatment of urban and rural drinking water supplies, while also including a historical overview, human health impacts and policy considerations. It provides a worldwide perspective on nitrogen and agriculture. Nitrogen is one of the most critical elements required in agricultural systems for the production of crops for feed, food and fiber. The ever-increasing world population requires increasing use of nitrogen in agriculture to supply human needs for dietary protein. Worldwide demand for nitrogen will increase as a direct response to increasing population. Strategies and perspectives are considered to improve nitrogen-use efficiency. Issues of nitrogen in crop and human nutrition, and transport and transformations along the continuum from farm field to ground water, watersheds, streams, rivers, and coastal marine environments are discussed. Described are aerial transport of nitrogen from livestock and agricultural systems and the potential for deposition and impacts. The current status of nitrogen in the environment in selected terrestrial and coastal environments and crop and forest ecosystems and development of emerging technologies to minimize nitrogen impacts on the environment are addressed. The nitrogen cycle provides a framework for assessing broad scale or even global strategies to improve nitrogen use efficiency. Growing human populations are the driving force that requires increased nitrogen inputs. These increasing inputs into the food-production system directly result in increased livestock and human-excretory nitrogen contribution into the environment. The scope of this book is diverse, covering a range of topics and issues from furthering our understanding of nitrogen in the environment to policy considerations at both farm and national scales.

This volume is based on papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium entitled "Plant Nitrogen Metabolism" held in conjunction with the 28th Annual Meeting of the Phytochemical Society of North America. The meeting took place on the campus of the University of Iowa at Iowa City during June 26-30, 1988, and attracted 110 participants from 11 countries. The goal of the symposium was to trace the pathway by which nitrogen passes from soil and atmosphere into both primary and secondary nitrogenous metabolites, focusing upon areas which were felt to be most rapidly expanding. From nodulines (nodule specific proteins) and GS/GOGAT mutants to sugar mimics (polyhydroxyalkaloids) and herbicide inhibitors of amino acid metabolism, research in nitrogen metabolism has expanded into areas barely envisioned only a few years ago. Both the nitrogen specialist and the general plant biochemist will be pleased by the range of topics covered here. Following an overview in Chapter 1 of plant nitrogen metabolism, the remaining chapters are loosely organized into three groups. Chapters 2-6 deal primarily with the biochemistry and molecular biology of nitrogen assimilation and transport, Chapters 7-9 with amino acid metabolism, and Chapters 10-12 with secondary metabolites.