Nitrogen in Crop Production

Consequently, the authors greatly overestimated the importance of lighting in forming reactive nitrogen. But the lecture s dramatic narrative still reads well more than 150 years later  

As it is from the mouths of volcanoes, then, whose convulsions often make the crust of our globe to tremble, that the principal food of plants, carbonic acid, is incessantly poured out so it is from the atmosphere on fire with lightnings, from the bosom of the tempest, that the 

Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1802-1887). Courtesy of the E. F. Smith Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. 

Carbonic acid, water and ammonia, contain the elements necessary for the support of animals and vegetables. The same substances are the ultimate products of the chemical processes of decay and putrefaction. All the innumerable products of vitality resume, after death, the original form from which they sprung. And thus death—the complete dissolution of an existing generation—becomes the sources of life for a new one.  

He recognized the critical importance of nitrogen in farming by juxtaposing agriculture and forestry  

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Scriber, J.M. 1984 Nitrogen nutrition of plants and insect invasion. In Hauck, R.D. (ed.) Nitrogen in Crop Production. American Society of Agronomy, Madison, pp. 441-460. 

Hauck RD, ed. (1984) Nitrogen in crop production. American Society of Agronomy, Madison, Wl. 

Smik V. (1999). Nitrogen in crop production An account of global flows, Global Biogeochem. Cycles 13,647-662. 

Since the amount of nitrogen fixed by legumes is an important factor in determining the amount of soil organic matter formed, its persistence, and its role in crop production, it is well to consider some of the more important factors that influence fixation. 

The efficiency with which nitrogen is utilized in crop production is affected by so many factors that few general unqualified statements can be made regarding its use. Some of the more important factors are discussed below, as well as in other chapters. Extensive discussions of the subject have beeif published by many authors including Harmsen and Van Schreven (1955), Allison (1964, 1966), Bartholomew and Clark (1965), Nelson and Hauck (1965) and Donald et al. (1963), Parr (1967). 

There is a paucity of information regarding the environmental formation or stability of N-nitrosopesticides. For example, the extensive use of atrazine in crop production programs utilizing heavy application of nitrogen fertilizers has raised the possibility of its N-nitrosation in soils (65). 

During the latter half of the 20th century, successive improvements in ammonia production have lowered-the-cost to the point that its liberal use in crop production is economically attractive. Notable among these improvements was perfection of processes for reforming natural gas or naphtha to supply the hydrogen-nitrogen synthesis gas and to increase the scale of operation. 

WHITEHEAD D.C. 1970. The role of nitrogen in grassland productivity. Commonwealth Bureau of Pastures and Field Crops, Bulletin No 48, Hurley, Berkshire. 

All of these realities will be taken up in considerable detail in this book. I will first describe nitrogen s unique and indispensable status in the biosphere, its role in crop production, and the traditional means of supplying the nutrient. Then I will concentrate on various attempts to expand natural nitrogen flows by introduction of mineral and synthetic fertilizers. The core of the book is a detailed narrative of the epochal discovery of ammonia synthesis by Fritz Haber and its commercialization by Carl Bosch and BASF. 

Since about 1968, triple superphosphate has been far outdistanced by diammonium phosphate as the principal phosphate fertilizer, both in the United States and worldwide. However, production of triple superphosphate is expected to persist at a moderate level for two reasons (/) at the location of a phosphoric acid—diammonium phosphate complex, production of triple superphosphate is a convenient way of using sludge acid that is too impure for diammonium phosphate production and (2) the absence of nitrogen in triple superphosphate makes it the preferred source of phosphoms for the no-nitrogen bulk-blend fertilizers that frequendy are prescribed for leguminous crops such as soy beans, alfalfa, and clover. 

Soil Nutrient. Molybdenum has been widely used to increase crop productivity in many soils woddwide (see Fertilizers). It is the heaviest element needed for plant productivity and stimulates both nitrogen fixation and nitrate reduction (51,52). The effects are particularly significant in leguminous crops, where symbiotic bacteria responsible for nitrogen fixation provide the principal nitrogen input to the plant. Molybdenum deficiency is usually more prominent in acidic soils, where Mo(VI) is less soluble and more easily reduced to insoluble, and hence unavailable, forms. Above pH 7, the soluble anionic, and hence available, molybdate ion is the principal species. 

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