Crops, Nitrogen, Water: Are Legumes Friend, Foe, or Misunderstood Ally?

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) by crop legumes reduces demand for industrial nitrogen fixation (INF). Nonetheless, rates of BNF in agriculture remain low, with strong negative feedback to BNF from reactive soil nitrogen (N) and drought. We show that breeding for yield has resulted in strong relationships between photosynthesis and leaf N in non-leguminous crops, whereas grain legumes show strong relations between leaf N and water use efficiency (WUE). We contrast these understandings with other studies that draw attention to the water costs of grain legume crops, and their potential for polluting the biosphere with N. We propose that breeding grain legumes for reduced stomatal conductance can increase WUE without compromising production or BNF. Legume crops remain a better bet than relying on INF.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Trends in Plant Science

• Publication date

  2018-06-01

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.tplants.2018.02.009PMID 29559299
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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