The Key Laboratory was founded in July, 2011. It is one of the four regional key laboratories of plant nutrition and fertilization in China, and is affiliated with the national key discipline of Plant Nutrition in the college. The research team comprises21professors, 10 associated professors, 6 staff and over 100 graduate students. The experts include China “National 1000-plan Scholar”, “National Outstanding Teacher for Education”, and “National Outstanding Scholars in Agriculture Sciences”. Four young researches won the title of Talent of the New Century awarded by Ministry of Education. They have research and review papers published in much high impact international journals, obtained dozens of international and domestic invention patents. Since 2009, three of our PhD dissertations have outstood as the National One Hundred Excellent Dissertations every year for PhD Degree (two nominated).
High yielding crops require the application of large amounts of fertilizers, in particular nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. However, most of the crop plants are able to take up less than 40% of the applied N and 20% P fertilizers and the rest of them are lost to the environment or residual in soil. This leads to an increase in crop production cost, soil acidification and heavy metals pollutions, significant global environmental damage by eutrophication of marine and fresh water ecosystems and gaseous loss to the atmosphere. Consequently, novel strategies to restrict the excessive use of chemical fertilizers are required for sustainability of intensive agriculture production.
Besides the common approaches facilitated by soil testing and fertilization recommendation, developing bio-organic fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) crop plants with high nutrient use efficiency has turned out to be powerful and efficient solutions. Currently,the research interests of KLPNF-YR-MA mainly focus on the following issues:
lPhysiology and molecular biology of plant nutrition
lMolecular breeding of new crop cultivars for efficient use of nutrient resources
lNutrient cycling and crop fertilization in intensive agriculture production
lSoil microorganisms and bio-organic fertilizers
Director: Dr. Guohua Xu
Chair of academic committee: Dr. Jianmin Zhou
