Research Center for Nitrogen and Phosphorus Upcycling

• Overview

  This collaborative work aims to team up interdisciplinary researchers in engineering and agriculture to develop innovative technologies of nutrients, i.e., nitrogen and phosphorus, for water preservation, appropriate fertilizer application, and resource recovery and reutilization. There have been huge gaps between agriculture and engineering, soil and water, and dry and wet methodologies regarding nutrient management. However, nutrients are essential in agriculture as a fertilizer and in engineering as materials for food and industrial manufactures. Nitrogen discharge into the atmosphere and water leads to global warming and water pollution. Japan totally relies on imports of phosphorus rocks, requiring the development of efficient phosphorus recovery and re-utilization technologies and methodologies. Despite the significance of nutrient management, technology transfers between agriculture and engineering, and soil and water have not been implemented. Given this challenge, we will build up a consortium where researchers in agriculture and engineering work on nutrient management and recovery by different approaches to develop innovative nutrient management technologies and to equip junior researchers with interdisciplinary subjects to tackle against the nutrient crisis in the 21st century. Whereas Japanese researchers have explored novel microorganisms and developed innovative technologies on water reclamation, prevention of greenhouse gas emissions, and nutrient recovery, German researchers have developed novel methodologies for monitoring ecophysiologies of microorganisms responsible for nutrient transformations and nutrient management in croplands based on a machine learning-based approach. The combination of the developed technologies and methodologies can be testified in a test plant and field in Germany. For consolidating the consortium, leading researchers in the US, Ireland, Korea and Taiwan strongly support the development of an innovative nutrient-management technologies by providing the state-of-the-art analytical tools and elucidating molecular mechanisms. By harmonizing the intradisciplinary research, incubating nutrient management technologies and young raising researchers will be performed.

  

Members

Shin Okazaki  (Institute of Agriculture / Professor)
Chihiro Fushimi  (Institute of Engineering / Professor)
Shinsuke Koike  (Institute of Global Innovation Research / Professor)
Yohey Hashimoto (Institute of Agriculture / Associate Professor)
Yu Umezawa  (Institute of Agriculture / Associate Professor)
Shinji Kanehashi  (Institute of Engineering / Associate Professor)
Shin-ichiro Agake  (Institute of Global Innovation Research / Assistant Professor)