Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NARO

Our group focuses on visualizing the environmental impacts of agriculture and food systems as a whole by assessing material cycling, including nitrogen cycling, from farmland to the national scale. To achieve this, we integrate and analyze large-scale datasets related to agricultural soils, farming activities, and food systems; apply process-based models of soil water, carbon, and nitrogen dynamics; and develop nitrogen footprint approaches. As part of these efforts, in 2026, we developed a sewage-sludge version of an application that estimates plant-available nutrient supply from organic amendments and support appropriate fertilizer application (the original application was led by the Kyushu Okinawa Agricultural Research Center).
From 2026 onward, our group is further advancing its research with a renewed team. We aim to develop data-driven soil management technologies and comprehensive soil assessment frameworks that help reduce environmental burdens, with a particular focus on the cycling of carbon, nitrogen and other nutrients, water, and trace metals.