Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Two Mississippi State biology faculty members are receiving more than $460,000 from the National Science Foundation to support new agriculture-related research that could help reduce the nation's burgeoning energy costs.
Professors Lakshmi Pulakat and Nara Gavini of the biological sciences department are working with a three-year grant to develop innovative approaches that help crop plants utilize atmospheric nitrogen instead of depending on ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizers for their growth.
Pulakat said their long-term goal is reducing the agricultural community's dependence on the ammonia-based product.
"Only lower organisms and bacteria can convert atmospheric nitrogen, but if we can find a way for plants to utilize atmospheric nitrogen, we can go a long way to addressing the problems associated with producing and using chemical fertilizers," she explained.
In addition to being expensive, ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizer presents pollution concerns when groundwater carries the chemicals into rivers and streams, Pulakat added.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nitrogen fertilizer "is one of the largest indirect uses of energy on an agricultural operation and accounts for 29 percent of agriculture energy use."
Both Pulakat and Gavini hold doctorates in biochemistry from the University of Melbourne, Australia. They joined the MSU faculty in 2005.
The NSF is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense."
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional information, contact Drs. Pulakat and Gavini at telephone 662-325-3120 or by e-mail, respectively, at pulakat@biology.msstate.edu and gavini@biology.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.