RALEIGH – One thing that hasn’t slowed down at UNC System campuses during the coronavirus pandemic is research.
At a recent UNC Board of Governors committee meeting, NC State University Chancellor Randy Woodson reported that research at NC State is up 10% this year, and UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said research is up 15% at Carolina.
NC State faculty have been very productive with their continued research, Woodson says in the accompanying video. And Woodson – a plant scientist by training – shares an example that’s extremely important to crops.
Phosphorus is the “P” in the N-P-K labeling you see on bags of lawn fertilizer. It’s critical to photosynthesis in a plant, as well as the process of carrying genes from one generation to the next.1
But there can also be too much of a good thing: Excess phosphorus can prompt algae blooms in bodies of water – that’s why we have low-phosphate detergents.
Woodson says NC State is pursuing a grant to try to put phosphorus where it’s needed most – and the project could mean hundreds of millions of dollars to North Carolina.
The Nutrien Phosphate Mine at Aurora in Beaufort County is not only one of just two phosphorus mines in North America, but the largest in the world. (There’s also a cool fossil museum that features marine fossils unearthed at the mine.)
The National Science Foundation grant the university is pursuing would use agricultural scientists as well as materials scientists and engineers to attempt to capture phosphorus where there’s too much of it and “remobilize that in a way that benefits agricultural crops,” Woodson says.
“It’s an example of what happens when you bring agricultural scientists and materials scientists and engineers together to solve a problem, coming at it from different disciplines,” he says.
It’s also an example of why – pandemic or not – university research must continue.
1 http://www.ipni.net/publication/bettercrops.nsf/0/53639639D7A590D685257
98000820183/$FILE/Better%20Crops%201999-1%20p06.pdf.
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