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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

Isolation and Analysis of Microbial Communities in Soil, Rhizosphere, and Roots in Perennial Grass Experiments
Published on: July 24, 2018
Bacteria on leaves: a previously unrecognised source of N2O in grazed pastures
Saman Bowatte1, Paul C D Newton1, Shona Brock1
1AgResearch Limited, Grasslands Research Centre, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Abstract:
Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from grazed pastures are a product of microbial transformations of nitrogen and the prevailing view is that these only occur in the soil. Here we show this is not the case. We have found ammonia-oxidising bacteria (AOB) are present on plant leaves where they produce N2O just as in soil. AOB (Nitrosospira sp. predominantly) on the pasture grass Lolium perenne converted 0.02-0.42% (mean 0.12%) of the oxidised ammonia to N2O. As we have found AOB to be ubiquitous on grasses sampled from urine patches, we propose a 'plant' source of N2O may be a feature of grazed grassland.
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