Nitrogen Use Efficiency as a Systems Property: A Four-Layer Perspective and Design Principle for Bridging the Laboratory-to-Field Gap in Crop Breeding
Nitrogen (N) fertilizer sustains modern crop production, yet less than half of applied reactive N is recovered in harvested products, with the remainder lost through volatilization, denitrification, leaching, and runoff. Although hundreds of genes regulating N uptake, assimilation, and remobilization have been identifi...