Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are playing a key role in a new international research effort to reduce agricultural emissions and improve nitrogen management in farming systems. Launching this year, the international research platform Agricultural Nitrogen Use Efficiency Platform, or AgNUE, will work over the next five years to transform how nitrogen is managed in agriculture. The overarching goal is to reduce environmental losses without compromising crop productivity. To reach this goal, the platform will collect comprehensive data from intensively monitored field sites to improve the accuracy of models that simulate and predict nitrogen dynamics, and to assess how different practices affect nitrogen emissions, agricultural productivity, and the environment.

Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for global food security, but when mismanaged, it contributes to significant environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, as well as ecosystem degradation.

Despite decades of research, the proportion of applied nitrogen fertilizer that is actually taken up by crops remains below 50% in many crops. This means that more than half of the nitrogen applied to fields is lost, creating a cascade of environmental and economic costs.

One key reason is that many of today’s models used to estimate how fertilizer moves through soil and how much is lost to air and water rely on data of suboptimal quality. Such data do not fully reflect how nitrogen behaves in real fields under changing weather, soil conditions, and management practices. Improving these models is crucial, as they help bridge the gap between scientific understanding of nitrogen cycling and the implementation of policies designed to mitigate nitrogen pollution.

AgNUE addresses this challenge by creating the first international network dedicated to measuring and understanding how nitrogen moves through agricultural fields. Spanning Europe and the United States, the initiative brings together leading research institutions to collect comparable, high-quality field data under different soil types, climates, and farming systems.

“If we want to reduce nitrogen losses at scale, we need models that reflect what actually happens in the field,” says Diego Abalos, professor and PI of the project, Aarhus University. “AgNUE is designed to close the gap between measurements, models, and real-world decision-making.”

Illinois professors Wendy Yang and Kaiyu Guan, with support from the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, will contribute to AgNUE through field-based research and advanced modeling. At the field level, Yang, a professor in plant biology, will lead the Illinois field research site in central Illinois, which represents the highly productive corn-soybean systems of the U.S. Midwest. According to Yang, the project’s strength lies in its comprehensive approach, which brings together field measurements, experiments to understand underlying processes, microbiology, and modeling to better characterize the system as a whole and improve predictive accuracy.

“Nitrogen moves through agricultural systems via complex interactions among crops, soil microbes, and their environment. The comprehensive approach of AgNUE is a game-changer for understanding how the systems behave and evaluating practices aimed at improving fertilizer use by crops,” said Yang.   

Yang also serves as co-lead for soil microbiology, helping the broader team better understand how soil microbes influence nitrogen cycling, nitrous oxide emissions, and nitrogen use efficiency. That work will help connect field measurements to the biological processes driving emissions and strengthen the scientific foundation for mitigation strategies.

Guan, a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, co-leads work focused on explainable AI to identify the key factors driving nitrous oxide fluxes and improve the accuracy of process-based models. He also leads the development of AI-enabled model-data fusion tools to quantify and reduce uncertainty in emissions predictions across diverse agricultural systems.

“Illinois is at the forefront of using advanced models to capture the complex biogeochemical processes governing nitrogen in crops and soils. The rich, high-resolution dataset generated by AgNUE across diverse agricultural systems will be transformative. Not only will it enhance our ability to track nutrient fates through the environment after it leaves the field, but it will enable us to provide valuable tools and guidance to farmers,” said Guan.

A new benchmark for nitrogen research

At the core of AgNUE is a network of twelve intensively monitored field sites, known as “supersites,” including one located at the Crop Sciences and Education Center near the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Across all sites, nitrogen inputs, transformations, and losses are measured continuously and in much greater detail than before. These measurements are combined with advanced isotopic techniques and microbial studies to better understand what drives nitrogen losses.

For the first time, results from coordinated nitrogen balance experiments will be stored in an open, central data repository with harmonized quality assurance procedures, creating a unique benchmark dataset for testing and improving a wide range of models.

“Better data is the foundation for better models,” says Alex Woodley, Associate Professor and Co-PI at North Carolina State University. “By working across countries and production systems, AgNUE will significantly improve our ability to predict nitrogen losses and evaluate mitigation strategies under real conditions.”

From science to policy and practice

The Illinois team also plans to work closely with farmers and other stakeholders to better understand the practices most relevant to the region and help ensure the research addresses real-world needs. Together, these contributions position Illinois as a key partner in translating detailed field and microbial data into scalable, decision-ready tools that can support better nitrogen management in the U.S., Europe, and beyond.

“Agriculture is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions because of its use of nitrogen fertilizer. At the same time, agriculture is increasingly exposed to the consequences of climate change — including those driven by its own emissions. I am confident that the tools developed through the AgNUE platform can help mitigate climate change globally without compromising crop productivity and food security,” says Claus Felby, Vice President for Agriculture and Food, Novo Nordisk Foundation.

By combining multi-scale modeling, model ensembles, and AI-driven model–data fusion, AgNUE aims to significantly reduce uncertainty in nitrogen balances and losses. This strengthened modeling capacity responds directly to the growing need for robust and verifiable reporting of agricultural emissions in national and European climate strategies.

International collaboration

Hosted by Aarhus University (Denmark), AgNUE brings together universities and research organizations specializing in soil biogeochemistry, agroecosystem modeling, microbiology, meteorology, and sustainable agronomy. The platform is supported by $27.2 million in funds from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and $7.5 million from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR).

Partners are brought together across Europe and the United States: North Carolina State University (USA), University of Illinois (USA), Wageningen University & Research (Netherlands), University of Basilicata (Italy), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

(Germany), Danish Technological Institute (Denmark), Colorado State University (USA), Technical University of Madrid (Spain), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), University of Helsinki (Finland), and INRAE – the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (France).

Together, the consortium will establish a long-term research platform designed to accelerate the development, testing, and adoption of nitrogen loss mitigation strategies. The initiative is expected to deliver co-benefits for climate mitigation, ecosystem health, public health, and economic resilience in agriculture.