Will biotechnology replace nitrogen fertilizer?
Date: 3.4.2007
Research in molecular biology has put highly desirable and widely adopted traits for herbicide and pest resistance into crop plants. It is expected that the science will soon impact the rate of progress in yield improvement, and that genetically modified plants may show increased stress tolerance and nutrient use efficiency. What is the likelihood of being able to replace N fertilizer altogether?
Plants of the legume family have always been able to make their own N. A complex symbiosis with rhizobial bacteria lets them make the ammonium they need for protein synthesis directly from the N gas abundant in the air. They fix N using the nitrogenase enzyme of the bacteria. It costs the plant something for energy, but perennial species like alfalfa are efficient enough at it that they rarely respond to N fertilizer. Transferring the trait to non-legume crops would be a major challenge. The most important grain crops of the world - the cereals ... corn, wheat, and rice - are all non-legumes. They take most, if not all, of their N from the soil. They generally do not produce high yields without N fertilizer.
Research on the genetic control of the legume symbiosis has led to identification of the plant genes that trigger the formation of nodules.A breakthrough was reported in the summer of 2006. Dr. Giles Oldroyd, a scientist working at the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Britain, said: “The fact that we can induce the formation of nodules in the plant in the absence of the bacteria is an important first step in transferring this process to non-legumes. ... However, we still have a lot of work before we can generate nodulation in non-legumes.”,,,,
Whole article: "www.checkbiotech.org":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=14775&start=1&control=209&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1]
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