Advancing Sustainable Agriculture

We are translating our sustainable design approach to tackle challenges across today's agriculture system. Research in the Gilbertson Group involves systems-level analyses and new technology development. In particular, we are interested in leveraging systems-level analysis to guide our design of new solutions to improve the inefficient use of agrochemicals.

Our perspective featured on the cover of ES: Nano discusses the critical gaps in applying life cycle assessment to proactively evaluating nano-enabled technologies for use in agriculture. ​

Pourzahedi, L.; Pandorf, M.; Ravikumar, D., Zimmerman, J. B.; Seager, T. P.; Theis, T. L.; Westerhoff, P.; Gilbertson, L. M.*, Lowry, G. V. “Life cycle considerations of nano-enabled agrochemicals:  Are today’s tools up to the task?” Environmental Science: Nano, 2018, 5, 1057-1069.

Our paper featured on the cover of ACS SCE proposes a new metric - atom conversion efficiency - for quantifying nutrient efficiency from acquisition to fork, highlighting the severe inefficiencies for nitrogen and phosphorus.

Urso, J. and Gilbertson, L. M. Sustainability Metrics in Agriculture: Revealing Fertilizer System Inefficiencies through the Application of Atom Economy Article ASAP, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b03600 

Other relevant publications

Yin, J.; Wang, Y.; Gilbertson, L. M. "Opportunities to Advance Sustainable Design of Nano-Enabled Agriculture Identified Through a Literature Review." Environmental Science: Nano, 2018, DOI: 10.1039/C7EN00766C.

 Funding support for this research comes from:

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