Plant trait‐based approaches to improve nitrogen cycling in agroecosystems

Summary

Abstract Intensive agriculture is dominated by monocultures of high‐yielding plants that receive large applications of nitrogen (N) fertilizers to boost plant productivity. However, these systems have low N use efficiency (NUE) as fertilized plants generally take up less than half of the N applied. A large fraction of the remainder N is susceptible to be lost from the agroecosystem generating a cascade of environmental and socio‐economic problems. Climate change and projected global increases in fertilizer use pose further risks to N losses and yield stability. We review and translate concepts from ecology in natural systems to demonstrate that NUE in intensive agroecosystems can be strongly increased by fine‐tuning the traits of the plant communities to the levels of N fertilization inten