"The ability of beans to fix nitrogen from air presents an opportunity by which the environmental damaging impacts of excessive synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use may be avoided"
The potential of grain legume crops such as faba beans to harness the nitrogen present in air into biologically useful forms is well known, but how much of an opportunity does it present for farmers wanting to pursue net-zero agriculture? A research team from the James Hutton Institute has recorded the first UK-wide measurement of nitrogen added by faba beans. The study focused on a range of production systems, including the use of long-term crop-rotational data from the Institute’s Centre for Sustainable Cropping.
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