The University of Michigan wants to harvest your pee, and it's not an April Fools' joke.

Researchers at the university's College of Engineering set up a pop-up bathroom with two porta-potties on central campus near the Chemistry Building on North University on Wednesday in order to solicit urine samples from passersby. More than 130 people donated samples for the project.

The urine will be part of a research project to investigate whether disinfected human urine samples could be safely recycled and used to fertilize food crops for human consumption. The school is working with four other institutions in the first large-scale pilot project of its kind in the U.S.

Researchers said that the reason they want to use urine is because of the availability of it and because it is abundant in nutrients that plants need in order to grow, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.

"These nutrients often remain in the effluent that wastewater treatment plants discharge back into rivers. In waterways, nutrient pollution can lead to algal blooms and dead zones where fish can't survive," a U-M release read.

"They can also produce toxins that could taint drinking water. Beyond nutrients, urine carries most of the excess pharmaceuticals that our bodies don't use when we take medications."

The researchers are studying both fresh urine and a solid fertilizer called struvite that they can make from the urine.

The project is one of several that is being funded by a $2.2 million EPA grant to the Water Environment Research Foundation to form the National Research Center for Resource Recovery and Nutrient Management.

If enough urine is gathered, the researchers will use it to test a reactor that produces the solid fertilizer struvite from urine.

Collecting pee wasn't the university's only aim, though. The researchers said they wanted the event to serve as an opportunity to facilitate conversations about the taboo topic of recycling urine.

Jeremy Allen is the higher education reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Follow him on twitter at @JeremyAllenA2. Contact him at 810-247-4625 or jallen42@mlive.com. Find other University of Michigan-related stories here on MLive.com.