Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is the proportion of nitrogen present that a plant absorbs and uses. Improving nitrogen use efficiency and thus fertilizer efficiency is important to make agriculture more sustainable, by reducing pollution (fertilizer runoff) and production cost and increasing yield. Worldwide, crops generally have less than 50% NUE. Better fertilizers, improved crop management, selective breeding, and genetic engineering can increase NUE.
Nitrogen use efficiency can be measured at various levels: the crop plant, the soil, by fertilizer input, by ecosystem productivity, etc. At the level of photosynthesis in leaves, it is termed photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency (PNUE).