Canadian researcher Dr. Claudia Wagner-Riddle has been awarded the International Fertilizer Association’s (IFA) 2020 Norman Borlaug Award for her multidisciplinary research that has helped improve fertilizer nitrogen use efficiency and reduce nitrous oxide (N20) losses by up to 70 percent without sacrificing crop yields. IFA said she was among the first researchers to apply micrometeorological techniques to monitor and better understand year-round N20 emissions from cropping systems by using a tunable diode laser trace gas analyzer.
Dr. Wagner-Riddle also leads a large collaborative group of scientists at the University of Guelph, where she is currently a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences, in a new outdoor soil monitoring laboratory. The first of its kind in North America, the laboratory is designed to mimic field conditions while also containing highly sophisticated monitoring equipment.
IFA said the results of Dr. Wagner-Riddle’s research have so far informed Canada’s national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and the Nitrous Oxide Emissions Reduction Protocol (NERP) approved by the Alberta provincial government for use in its agricultural carbon offsets program, and have led to the recognition of nitrification inhibitors in the province of Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan.