Stanford-How would it be if all plants could fertilize themselves from cost-free nitrogen that makes up three-fourths of the Earth’s atmosphere? A few plants, such as alfalfa, soybeans, and peanuts, can already do this with friendly bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into a nutrient. Now a Stanford University team has discovered how these plants send molecules into the microbes to facilitate their movement into the plant roots. This discovery raises hopes that someday other crops can be genetically programmed to welcome these bacteria into their roots, thereby allowing the plants to fertilize themselves. “Think how much energy consumption (used to produce millions of tons of fertilizer annually) could be offset if we could rely more on biological nitrogen fixation,” declared Joel Griffitts, a member of the Stanford research team and currently a Brigham Young University assistant professor of microbiology. Griffitts co-authored the team’s report, which appears in Science. “Here’s a system in legumes that pulls nitrogen right out of thin air and converts it into fertilizer,” Griffitts explained. “We’ve found the pathway by which the plants deliver the right molecules to the bacteria to facilitate nitrogen fixation.” He points to the possibility of future applications of the nitrogen-fixing process that may include fine-tuning it in legumes so they are more efficient at producing useful nitrogen, and transferring the process to important crops outside the legume family. Also, he believes we are poised to learn more about how diseases progress, since many of the genes involved in the relationship between the bacteria and plants are also found in the development of bacterial disease.
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