Rice attributes that improve nitrogen use efficiency found Updated: Updated: It could help farmers use nitrogenous fertilizers efficiently, save costs. Share Article It could help farmers use nitrogenous fertilizers efficiently, save costs. A team of scientists reports physical attributes and genes that help identify which types of rice use nitrogen efficiently. Such knowledge could help farmers use nitrogenous fertilizers efficiently, save costs, as well as limit nitrogen-linked pollution, which contributes to climate change. An inter-disciplinary team led by Nandula Raghuram from New Delhi’s Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University found that N-use-efficient (NUE) cultivars tend to be slow in germination and flowering, grow tall and deep with higher biomass and take longer duration to harvest but yield more with lesser N input. They also reported 34 genes associated with NUE for potential crop improvement. Their findings have just been published in international journal