Isotopic assessment of soil NO emission from a sub-tropical agricultural soil under varying N-inputs.

Nitrogen fertilizers result in high crop productivity but also enhance the emission of NO, an environmentally harmful greenhouse gas. Only approximately a half of the applied nitrogen is utilized by crops and the rest is either vaporized, leached, or lost as NO, NO and N via soil microbial activity. Thus, improving the nitrogen use efficiency of cropping systems has become a global concern.