Belinda Smith

I did.

I remember coming into work on the morning of the lunar flyby and looking up at the moon, which was still high in the sky, and thinking, gosh, there are people up there.

It's just an amazing thought.

But the Artemis II mission wasn't the only thing in the news.

Also dominating headlines is the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

This has created shortages, not just of oil, but also nitrogen fertilisers.

And this is a big deal.

we need fertilisers to get high yields out of pretty much every crop.

So scientists have been looking for ways to get more bang for their fertiliser buck, not only in times of scarcity like these, but also as the world's population continues to grow.

Noah Abrahams at the University of Melbourne has looked into this.

When you put nitrogen fertiliser in soil, how much of it is actually used by the plants?

Nitrogen is found in the air we breathe that makes up the largest components of the atmosphere, but plants get it from the soil, not the air, right?

Can we just talk a little bit about what happens to the ammonium that is not used by the plants?

Where does that end up and does that have any effect on the environment?

Sort of shading the crop that it's come off of, perhaps.

What about some of the other pathways that the ammonium might take?

Another cake that they can't eat.

And what does it do when it gets in water?

Okay, so 50% of nitrogen fertilizers that are spread onto agricultural land, not actually taken up by the plants, but instead they end up in the atmosphere, in the air, or in waterways or the ocean where they can have terrible effects.

So how do you stop that 50% from leaving the soil, wreaking all this damage elsewhere, and just keeping it there so the plants can continue to use it?