NUCLEUS: a virtual joint centre to deliver enhanced Nitrogen Use effiCiency via an integrated SoiL-plant systEms approach for the Uk & BraSil

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World agriculture has made enormous advances in recent decades in increasing crop production largely through increasing the application of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. Nitrogen (N) is a key nutrient and often a limiting factor for crop growth supporting the need for the addition of synthetic N fertilisers for most global agricultural systems. However a high proportion of this, often estimated to be >50%, is currently lost into the environment often through the soil via leaching or to the atmosphere as a gas emission. This loss of N to the environment is represents a significant economic loss and pollutes surface and ground-waters, impacting negatively on ecosystems and increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Cutting across this is our future need to increase agricultural production in order to meet the demands of global food security for the rapidly expanding population. This challenge will necessitate a significant improvement in the management of N and in particular Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) in both Brazil and the UK. The extent to which the release of reactive N can be mitigated to some degree through approaches related to improving agronomic NUE (e.g. using no-tillage systems, intercropping, combined crop-livestock systems, applying organic wastes to soils as amendments will be addressed here for the first time in an integrated holistic way between 13 partner organisations in Brazil and the UK. The NUCLEUS Virtual Centre will seek to undertake interdisciplinary research, with physical and social scientists, using the latest technologies to assess, understand and recommend new strategies concerning agronomic NUE management to support future crop development and food production. NUCLEUS will build on several current collaborations, whist generating many new ones for the future and seek to engage and inspire the next generation of scientists to tackle this important area. As the current level of understanding concerning the integration of these approaches is limited, there is potential for the outputs of NUCLEUS to be a bench mark for tropical and temperate agriculture throughout the world.