In AgriFoodTure, our project portfolio currently consists of 11 projects which contributes to the green transition of the food and agriculture system. One of the projects is ZeroEmission which project manager Betina Nørgaard Pedersen answers 3 questions about here:
What is your goal with the project?
A significant portion of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is related to the use of nitrogen fertilizers from both mineral fertilizers and animal manure. Therefore, it is necessary that we develop strategies to reduce emissions from fertilizer use, and that we can test and document these effectively and accurately.
In ZeroEmission, we aim to lay the foundation for this. We do this based on several components. Firstly, we are developing a platform where emission data can be collected and analyzed efficiently. Secondly, we conduct field experiments, measuring nitrous oxide emissions from different fertilization strategies. Thirdly, we investigate the underlying drivers of nitrous oxide emissions and potential mitigation strategies to reduce emissions in the laboratory.
What is the current status of the project?
A series of experiments in both the field and the laboratory have been carried out as planned and have provided exciting new data and knowledge about nitrous oxide emissions and potential mechanisms for reducing nitrous oxide.
The work to develop the emissions platform is also well underway and will make it much easier to collect and work with large datasets in the future. In addition, efforts are being made to develop data models for flux calculation methods that ensure uniform data processing and enable more efficient processing of results from nitrous oxide measurements in field experiments.
Do you have any findings or solutions so far?
When measuring nitrous oxide emissions in flux chambers, which are often used in field experiments, samples are taken at time intervals, and it is common practice to manually record the time with a stopwatch. This means both a lot of effort and the risk of errors. In this project, the Technical Institute has developed a timekeeping app that automates this process and ensures the minimization of manual typing errors and efficient data management by automatically uploading data to the emissions platform. This tool represents only a small part of the work but brings great value to the experimental work and data quality.
Another result comes from laboratory experiments with biochar, indicating that certain biochar have the potential to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from nitrogen fertilizers when fertilizer and biochar are applied together in the soil.
