On December 23, 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) announced the selection of the “Top 10 News on Agricultural Technology for 2021”. Among them, the JIRCAS research results on the “development of biological nitrification inhibition (BNI)-enhanced wheat that shows high productivity even when the amount of nitrogen fertilizer” was selected as Topic 7.
The results of the selection are as follows.
A research group led by the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) has developed a biological nitrification inhibition (BNI)-enhanced wheat that maintains the same productivity as normal wheat even with 60% less nitrogen fertilizer by crossbreeding a high-yielding wheat variety with the closely related wild species with high BNI potential. In addition to reducing the use of nitrogen fertilizer, the new BNI-enhanced wheat is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.
The "Top 10 News on Agricultural Technology" is a list of the 10 major research achievements in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries by private companies, universities, public research institutes, and national research and development agencies that have been reported in newspapers during the past year. The winners were selected through a voting process by the members of the Agricultural Technology Club consisting of newspaper and magazine correspondents.
For details of the results, please visit the website of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Council, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
https://www.affrc.maff.go.jp/docs/press/211223.html (in Japanese)
https://www.affrc.maff.go.jp/docs/press/attach/pdf/211223-1.pdf (in Japanese)
JIRCAS Press Release (Aug 31, 2021)
World’s first successful development of wheat that shows high productivity with less nitrogen fertilizer― Use of ammonium to prevent nitrogen pollution and increase food production at the same time ―