An article by JIRCAS and NARO, ”Biological nitrification inhibition in maize — isolation and identification of hydrophobic inhibitors from root exudates”, was published on June 17th in Biology and Fertility of Soils. In the article, we reported the first successful identification of BNI compounds from maize roots.

An Opinion article by JIRCAS and Princeton University, A “more ammonium solution” to mitigate nitrogen pollution, boosts crop yields, was published in the June 1^st edition of the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America (PNAS).

The discussions during the 3rd International BNI Meeting held in Tsukuba, Japan organized by JIRCAS in 2018 provided the inspiration to develop this article.

The 4th BNI International Consortium Meeting has been postponed to October 14-16, 2021, because of the measures against new coronavirus infections.

Our proposal in India has been provisionally selected^* for FY 2021 SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development) project, which is a collaboration between the Japan Science Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) supported by MEXT and MOFA.

^* Before formally starting a project, an international agreement needs to be concluded. The selection of the new SATREPS projects at this stage is considered to be provisional selection.

On 12 May 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries formulated the “Green Food System Strategy” to achieve both productivity and sustainability of food, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industries through innovation.

BNI technology was featured in “Green Growth Strategy with Carbon Neutrality in 2050” of Japanese government.

We invite and encourage researchers working on BNI research to submit their research and reviews for this special issue of Biology and Fertility of Soils, which is expected to be published at the end of 2021.