Climate change, increasing populations, competing demands on land for production of biofuels and declining soil quality are challenging global food security. Finding sustainable solutions requires bold new approaches and integration of knowledge from diverse fields, such as materials science and informatics. The convergence of precision agriculture, in which farmers respond in real time to changes in crop growth with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, offers exciting opportunities for sustainable food production. Coupling existing models for nutrient cycling and crop productivity with nanoinformatics approaches to optimize targeting, uptake, delivery, nutrient capture and long-term impacts on soil microbial communities will enable design of nanoscale agrochemicals that combine optimal safety and functionality profiles.

Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to enable sustainable and precision agriculture.

Multi-mycotoxin occurrence in feed, metabolism and carry-over to animal-derived food products: A review.

Excess atmospheric ammonia (NH3) leads to deleterious effects on biodiversity, ecosystems, air quality and health, and it is therefore essential to monitor its budget and temporal evolution. Hyperspectral infrared satellite sounders provide daily NH3 observations at global scale for over a decade. Here we use the version 3 of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) NH3 dataset to derive global, regional and national trends from 2008 to 2018. We find a worldwide increase of 12.8 ± 1.3 % over this 11-year period, driven by large increases in east Asia (5.80 ± 0.61 % increase per year), western and central Africa (2.58 ± 0.23 %.yr−1), North America (2.40 ± 0.45 %.yr−1) and western and southern Europe (1.90 ± 0.43 %.yr−1). These are also seen in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, while the southwestern part of India exhibits decreasing trends. Reported national trends are analyzed in the light of changing anthropogenic and pyrogenic NH3 emissions, meteorological conditions and the impact of sulfur and nitrogen oxides emissions, which alter the atmospheric lifetime of NH3. We end with a short case study dedicated to the Netherlands and the "Dutch Nitrogen crisis" of 2019.

/pdf/global-regional-and-national-trends-of-atmospheric-ammonia-3gyd1py5m8.pdf

Global, regional and national trends of atmospheric ammonia derived from a decadal (2008–2018) satellite record

Overuse of nitrogen (N) fertilizer, a crucial productivity factor in world cropping systems, is detrimental to the sustainability of crop production from an economic and environmental perspective. Mean yield, N fertilizer use, partial factor productivity (PFP) of N, N use efficiency (NUE) and N surplus in wheat, cotton and rice production in Pakistan, which account for 75% of total national fertilizer N use, were compared with those for the top producer countries for 2014. Pakistan was among the top four in terms of N use but had low mean yields, with the lowest PFP and NUE and highest N surplus. During 1961–2014 in Pakistan, N fertilizer use and N surplus grew at a much faster pace than mean yields; however, PFP and NUE continued to decline to much lower levels. The great potential for Pakistan to increase NUE lies in agronomic practices other than increasing N fertilization, such as balanced crop nutrition, irrigation management, inclusion of legumes in crop rotations, precision in-season N management and the use of enhanced efficiency fertilizers, as is the case for many other parts of the world. Nitrogen is critical to crop production but its overuse challenges sustainability. This study finds that, despite intense and growing nitrogenous fertilizer use, Pakistan’s crop yields have risen much more slowly than expected.

Crop production in Pakistan and low nitrogen use efficiencies

Budgeting nitrogen flows and the food nitrogen footprint of Egypt during the past half century: Challenges and opportunities.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa9c5/pdf

Piling up reactive nitrogen and declining nitrogen use efficiency in Pakistan: a challenge not challenged (1961–2013)

Spirulina has been used as a food source from many years for human and animals because of its superior profile of nutrition. Spirulina (SPA) having antiviral activities can boost immune system, and better nutritional profile can increase growth performance by improving gut morphology. This study was conducted to investigate the impact of spirulina supplementation in ration on the humoral and cellular immune response, gut histomorphology, and economics of broiler production. A total of 120 day-old chicks were assigned to 4 dietary treatment; SPA0, SPA1, SPA2, and SPA3, each with 3 replicates having 10 birds in each replicate until 42 days of age. Treatment SPA0 was kept as control, and the birds were fed on basal ration, while the other treatments SPA1, SPA2, and SPA3 were supplemented with 1, 1.5, and 2 g spirulina/kg feed, respectively. Dietary supplementation of SPA3 significantly (P < 0.05) improved feed intake (8.95%), weight gain (12.5%), feed conversion ratio, and dressing percentage than that of control. Dietary treatment of SPA had comparatively low level of heterophil and higher level of lymphocytes than the control treatment. Spirulina supplementation had significant (P < 0.05) effect over antibody titer, against ND vaccine. The supplementation of SPA in diet at all levels has a significant effect on lengths of villi, and it increased number of goblet cells. The SPA3 showed significant increase in net and gross return of birds followed by SPA2, SPA1, and SPA0. It was concluded that spirulina improved growth performance, gut integrity, and immunity with better economics in broiler production.

Spirulina inclusion levels in a broiler ration: evaluation of growth performance, gut integrity, and immunity

Aflatoxin M1 contamination of milk in Pakistan, like many developing countries, is poorly understood. The present study was therefore conducted to determine AFM1 contamination of milk and its contributory factors in Pakistan. We sampled milk and feedstuffs from 450 peri-urban dairy farms in seven major cities following a cross-sectional study design. Analysis of milk using ELISA revealed high contamination with an overall average of 3164.5 ng of AFM1/L, and significant differences (p < 0.001) between cities. The milk sampled from Gilgit, in northern hilly areas, had an average AFM1 level of 92.5 ng/L. Milk from other cities had 3529.7 ng/L average contamination, with only 5.7% samples qualifying the maximum tolerable limit of 500 ng of AFM1/L. Heavy mean aflatoxin contamination was found in bakery waste (724.6 μg/kg), and cottonseed cake (600.8 μg/kg). Rest of the other feedstuffs had moderate to low mean aflatoxin contamination, ranging from 66.0 μg/kg in maize stover to 3.4 μg/kg in wheat bran. The mean aflatoxin level in commercial dairy concentrates was 32.7 µg/kg. About 80% of the total aflatoxin intake of dairy animals was contributed by cottonseed cake alone due to its high aflatoxin contamination and proportion in dairy rations. On-farm storage time of oilseed cakes varied (p < 0.01) in different cities but was not associated with aflatoxin contamination. The exceptionally high AFM1 contamination suggests that milk from peri-urban dairy farms is a serious public health threat in Pakistan. This situation can be mitigated by reducing aflatoxin contamination in cottonseed cake and promoting the use of commercial concentrates and other feedstuffs with low contamination.

/pdf/aflatoxin-contamination-of-milk-produced-in-peri-urban-farms-19rb32q09s.pdf

Shahbaz Javaid

Papers

Piling up reactive nitrogen and declining nitrogen use efficiency in Pakistan: a challenge not challenged (1961–2013)

Spirulina inclusion levels in a broiler ration: evaluation of growth performance, gut integrity, and immunity

Aflatoxin Contamination of Milk Produced in Peri-urban Farms of Pakistan: Prevalence and Contributory Factors

Effect of Supplementing Microbial Phytase on Broiler Chicks Fed Low Di-calcium Phosphate Diets

Nutritional Evaluation of Various Stages of Maturity of Oat Hay and its Effect on Milk Production and Composition in Lactating Holstein Friesian Cows