ABSTRACT
Nitrogen Nutrition The majority of Earth’s atmosphere (78%) is nitrogen, making it the largest pool of nitrogen. However, atmospheric nitrogen has limited availability of biological use, leading to a scarcity of usable nitrogen in many types of ecosystems. Nitrogen is essential for many processes and is crucial for any life on Earth. It is a component in all amino acids, as incorporated into proteins, and is present in the bases that make up nucleic acids, such as RNA and DNA. In plants, much of nitrogen is used in chlorophyll molecules, which are essential for photosynthesis and further growth (Smil, 2000). Chemical processing or nitrogen fixation is necessary to convert gaseous nitrogen into forms usable by living organisms, which makes nitrogen a crucial component of food production.
