Nitrogen Utilization and Remobilization in Arabidopsis Under Nitrogen Depletion

With the rapidly increasing world population the demand for food is expected to double by 2050. Farmers will have to produce, throughout the next 50 years, the same amount of food they have produced throughout the last 10,000 years. Monsanto is working to help farmers meet these demands. Our R&D pipeline includes products that protect against significant crop production challenges and increase yield potential. Our goal is to use breeding, biotechnology and improved farming practices to develop crops that produce more yields while conserving natural resources. A key step in this process lies in improving crop nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) to help farmers produce more and save more while conserving the environment. An improved understanding of the transition between nitrogen assimilation and nitrogen remobilization is vital for improving crop NUE. In this talk, we describe how Arabidopsis plants when grown under sufficient, low, moderate or severe nitrogen-depleted conditions change their uptake, accumulation, partitioning and remobilization of nitrogen to adapt to these various conditions. Our results show that plants significantly improve their nitrogen assimilation, remobilization and partitioning to sink tissues under nitrogen depleted conditions.