show Abstracthide AbstractReducing the dependence of crop production on chemical fertilizer with its associated costs, carbon footprint and other environmental problems is a challenge for agriculture. New solutions are required to solve this problem, and crop breeding for high nitrogen use efficiency or tolerance of low nitrogen availability has been thought to be a promising approach. However, the molecular mechanisms of high nitrogen use efficiency or low-nitrogen tolerance in crop plants are still to be elucidated, including the role of long non-coding RNAs