A Special Issue containing Proceedings from the 17^th International Nitrogen Workshop has been published in the Journal of Agricultural Science. The conference, entitled ‘Innovations for sustainable use of nitrogen resources’, was held in Wexford, Ireland from 26^th – 29^th June 2012. It focused on innovations for sustainable use of N resources and covered new breakthroughs in science, knowledge transfer and management of N resources. There were a total of 31 oral papers and 196 posters from 804 authors in 31 countries across four continents. The Special Issue can be accessed here.