Smarter Nitrogen Use in Swiss Agriculture
We need nitrogen to grow food, otherwise soils would degrade. Yet today nitrogen surpluses can contaminate water or cause emissions contributing to climate change. The challenge is to apply nitrogen:
- In the right amount
- In the right place
- At the right time
Our Soil Sustainability mission aims to close this gap — equipping farmers with reliable data and practical tools so they can protect soils, minimise leaching and emissions, and secure food production for future generations.
Fertilisers are necessary to grow food. Applied without precision, they put water and climate at risk
Nutrient management is one of the major environmental challenges in modern agriculture. The mineral nitrogen fertiliser supply chain alone contributes 11% of global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Of this, 60% occurs in the field, primarily as nitrous oxide, which is almost 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide. In many parts of the world, including Switzerland, farmers tend to apply too much nitrogen, presenting a risk of leaching and contaminating drinking water and lakes. Nitrate itself becomes a health risk at higher concentrations and is linked to various forms of cancer and birth defects. In Switzerland, nitrate exceeds legal limits in half of monitoring sites in intensive farming regions, which threatens the groundwater that supplies 80% of our drinking water.
Addressing nitrogen loss requires connecting disciplines that traditionally work separately:
- Sensor engineering – to give farmers rapid, field-scale data on soil nitrate status.
- Material science – to design biodegradable, controlled-release fertiliser coatings.
- Environmental microbiology – to understand how fertiliser additives affect soil microbial communities.
- Soil science & agronomy – to match nutrient release to crop demand and reduce surpluses.
Protecting ecosystems and water quality is especially urgent, given the water scarcity of recent drought years. Advances in sensing technology and data tools are opening new possibilities to develop precise nutrient management solutions for agriculture.
Proposed solutions
We are considering four projects to target nitrogen management at multiple levels, aimed at reducing nutrient losses and their environmental impact:
- Nitrogen Sensing — Farmers today have little access to accurate data on soil nutrient status and must rely on broad fertiliser recommendations. We would look to develop portable sensors for in-field soil monitoring, combined with predictive models of nitrogen availability, to guide fertilisation decisions.
- Improved Nutrient Delivery — Applied nitrogen is often lost because fertilisers release nutrients faster than plants can use them. We would aim to develop biodegradable, tuneable-release coatings combined with nitrification inhibitors, to reduce leaching and emissions without the microplastic burden of conventional polymer coatings.
- Novel Fertilisers’ Effects on Soil Microbes — Biodegradable coatings and nitrification inhibitors act on soil microorganisms in ways that remain poorly understood. This proposed project would investigate the fate of fertiliser additives in soil and their effects on microbial communities, to help optimise nutrient release.
- Microbial Nitrous Oxide Reduction — Non-denitrifying N₂O-reducing bacteria (NNRB) can reduce N₂O to harmless dinitrogen gas; biogas digestates containing them have cut field N₂O emissions by 50–95% in prior studies. We would aim to isolate and build stable, scalable NNRB communities and test them in-field to assess this potential.