Wheat, a major staple food crop, grown over 220 million ha globally, consumes a third of nitrogen fertilizer produced worldwide. Nearly 70% of this nitrogen fertilizer is lost from wheat fields either through nitrate-leaching or gaseous emissions of nitrous oxides, causing ecological and environmental concerns.

Nitrogen fertilizers are mostly in ammonium form or converted into ammonium (from urea) when applied to wheat fields, bound to the soils, and not harmful to the environment. However, nitrifying soil bacteria has become aggressive in modern production systems and using most of fertilizer-N as energy source and turning it into harmful byproducts, NO3-, NO2, and NO, which then leaks out of farmlands, causing inefficiency, polluting waterbodies and harming environment.

Biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) is a natural plant function where nitrification inhibitors are released from roots to suppress nitrifier activity. Cultivated wheat does not have sufficient BNI-capacity in root systems. Wild-wheat (Leymus racemosus) has BNI-ability several-fold higher than in cultivated wheats; BNI-trait is in the short-arm of ‘n’ chromosome (Lr#n-SA), which is successfully introduced into and expressed in several elite-wheat varieties. Elite-wheat carrying Lr#n-SA are ‘BNI-wheats’, considered as a special category. BNI-wheats produce 3-5-fold higher BNI-activity from root systems, suppress soil-nitrate formation (30-50%), emission of nitrous oxides (about 30%) and require 30-50% less nitrogen fertilizers to produce similar grain yields.

The yield potential of BNI-wheats is like or better (10-20% of non-BNI controls) than present day wheat varieties. By transferring Lr#n-SA carrying BNI-trait, present-day wheat varieties can be converted into BNI-wheat varieties.

As BNI-wheat technology is seed-based, scaling up is easier; as this involves no-additional cost, farmer adoption of BNI-wheat varieties will be faster.