Unit of stable isotopic N15 analysis

The continuous and growing demand of crops and cattle for the domestic inhabitants, forces the search of technical solutions in agriculture. One of the solutions able to be covered in a near future it is the escalation of agricultural production in lands already being cultivated, either by means of an intensification of cultivation and / or increasing the unitary yields. In the intensive cropping systems, the crops extract substantial quantities of nutriments that is recovered by means of the application of fertilizers. Due to the lack of resources and to the increase of commercial inputs prices, it has been necessary to pay attention to the analysis and improvement of low inputs cropping systems and to the effective use of resources. Everything has made to establish a concept of plant nutrition focused system, which integrate the sources of nutriments for plants and the production factors of crops in a productive cropping system, to improve the fertility of soils, the agricultural productivity and profitability. This system includes the biggest efficiency of chemical fertilizers as the maximum profit of alternative sources of nutriments, such as organic fertilizers, citrate-phosphate rocks and biological nitrogen fixation. By means of field experiments under different environmental conditions (soils and climate) it can be determined the best combination of fertilizers practice (dose, placement, opportunity and source) for selected cropping systems. The experimentation with fertilizer, marked with stable and radioactive isotopes, provides a direct and express method to obtain conclusive answers to the questions: where, when and how should be applied. The fertilizers marked with N15 have been used to understand the application of marked fertilizer to the cultivations, and the determination of the proportion of crops nutritious element derived from fertilizer. The isotopic techniques offer a fast and reliable mean to obtain information about the distribution of active roots. The location of areas with higher density of absorbent roots and the way as they vary with the stations. The inorganic fertilizers can be substituted, in certain measure, by other sources of nutriments that are available in the town or that are less expensive. As well as the leguminous and other families, in symbiosis with the appropriate microorganisms can use the atmospheric N2 directly. The N15 isotopic techniques are really reliable to obtain quantitative and integrated fixed nitrogen values, either in natural or agricultural systems. Besides the supply of nutriments, the water is one of the main restrictive factors for the domestic agricultural production. The application of radiation techniques using neutron probe and gamma densitometers allows the development of methods to handle rain waters under agricultural drought conditions or to improve the efficiency of the irrigation use of water. The Stable Isotopes N15 Analysis Laboratory, of the Laboratory Unit of the Agroecologic Resources Investigations Institute (IIRA), of CENIAP, provides from its foundation, a valuable service support to the investigation of nitrogen fertilization, aswell as alternative nitrogen sources (biological fixation), and in the development of water handling methods. The laboratory was installed in 1989, with the collaboration of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This laboratory is in capacity to analyze N15 in water, land and vegetable tissue. The number of samples analyzed through these eight years of activities is 2000, being beneficiaries of this service diverse national agricultural research institutions (UCV, IVIC, LUZ and FONAIAP). The projects that have been assisted by the laboratory cover the areas previously mentioned, promoting the generation and deepening of knowledge, which helps to obtain a maximum efficiency in the use of nitrogen fertilizers and water, in the main domestic cropping systems