Science Snippet: The complexities of vineyard nitrogen nutrition
Di-ammonium phosphate is frequently added to grape juice at the start of fermentation to ensure yeast have adequate nitrogen to complete fermentation.
Could feeding cows brassicas help reduce nitrogen loss from the soil?
That's what University of Waikato second-year PhD student Sheree Balvert hopes to find out and recently landed a $10,000 scholarship to aid her research.
Sheree has been awarded the 2016 Pukehou Pouto Scholarship, which is awarded annually to students from any New Zealand university for postgraduate study in either agricultural science or silvicultural (forestry) science.
Sheree is researching negative agricultural impacts on the environment, which include water quality and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Cows are inefficient feeders with 70-95% of the nitrogen they eat being excreted in their waste," she says. "The concentrated urine patches that are deposited onto the ground contain more nitrogen than the plants and microbes in the soil can process, and the excess nitrogen is lost as nitrous oxide gas or as nitrate leaching out of the soil."
Sheree is researching the impact of feed change in cows, whether feeding them forage brassicas such as turnips, swedes and kale affects the nitrogen cycle and could reduce nitrogen loss in agricultural systems such as dairy or dry-stock farms.
"How and why this could work is what I'm trying to figure out," she says.
Sheree is supervised by Professor Louis Schipper at the University of Waikato and Dr Jiafa Luo at AgResearch. Her research is funded by the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) and the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium (PGGRC). Her stipend is also provided by NZAGRC. In 2015, Sheree was one of 10 finalists in the University's Three Minute Thesis Competition.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
Family and solidarity shone through at the 75 years of Ferdon sale in Otorohanga last month.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has informed staff it will cut 391 jobs following a consultation period.
OPINION: Scientists claim to have found a new way to make a substitute for cow's milk that could have a…
OPINION: The Irish have come up with a novel way to measure cow belching, which is said to account for…