Crops could make their own fertilizer
Plants that build homes for bacteria could do without chemical nitrogen.
Plant geneticists have induced plants to form 'fertilizer factories' without the aid of bacteria that are normally crucial to the process. If the technology can be transferred to plants such as wheat or rice, industrial fertilization of these crops could be reduced or even abolished.
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Comments
If plant would start making their own fertilizer without the aid of bacteris, then would the next fillial generation would carry same phenomenon or it would just remain up to the parent plant?
Posted by: Ms. Bhuvan Pathak | June 30, 2006 05:23 AM
It is typical for naive plant molecular biologists to ignore the energy cost of their transgenic proposals. In this case, it is making the plant fix N so that the plant (not man) absorbs the energy cost of reducing the fixed nitrogen. The idea that you can make the crop do N fixation (when it did not do that before) and bingo you get the same yield seems enticing, doesn't it? However, the laws of N reduction thermodynamics still apply whether man supplies the energy or the plant does. Transferring to the plant the energetic cost of the inductrial Haber-Bosch method of creating N fertilizer means you end up with lower crop yield, period.
Posted by: James E. Specht | June 30, 2006 09:58 PM
If the plants can be trained to make their own fertiliser, how far away is better capture or use of water?
I'm just picturing Roebuck Plains, Wolf Creek or somewhere like Shark Bay / Denham all coated with lush forests of mangoes or the like. (-:
Posted by: Mr Leon Brooks, Perth, WestOz | July 2, 2006 03:30 AM
Echoing the previous comments I wonder whether the molecular biologists fully appreciate the ecological conditions necessary in the soil for plants to obtain nitrogen and nitrogen fixing bacteria to function. Far more benefits will accrue from promoting better husbandry methods such as increasing soil organic matter and avoiding compaction than trying to force nitrogen fixation in an artificial situation. Once again an expensive technological fix when the money could be better invested in well tested and appropriate agricultural solutions.
Posted by: Gareth Davies | July 4, 2006 10:11 AM
This research seems a bit premature to be highlighted. Making empty nodules is not the critical step; being able to fix Nitrogen is. How do the bacteria do it? Can the plants be engineered to fix N without bacteria? Now that would be sensational! And they would not need nodules at all.
Posted by: Elisabeth Brown | July 7, 2006 03:56 AM