>For decades, researchers have tried to get bacteria to fix nitrogen for staple crops. Until recently, the approach was to collect wild strains of nitrogen-fixing bacteria from soil and apply them to seeds or spray them onto plants. “It doesn’t work,” says Jean-Michel Ané, a bioengineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is working on microbial fertilizers. The wild microbes fail to thrive when applied to crops that don’t provide them with carbon.
Sounds like they should have been trying to tweak the grains instead.
But all in all what they're doing sounds really promising. If they can even remove 40% of the synthetic fertilizer that would be absolutely huge!
You can't replace fertilizer with "bacteria"...you can replace many "standard" fertilizers with "algae" based'? Fertilizers. It's kind of like using chelated nutrients. - - Mafty
Sooo, still something man made and patented. Because why see which plants have a symbiotic relation and group the accordingly for each zone they thrive in, when we can plant genetically engineered corn and plant all over the world, and sprinkle that with some genetically engineered bacteria, just for the fun of it. /s
If you remove matter from an ecosystem, like when taking crops from a field to send to market, you need to replace that matter otherwise you deplete the soil. That’s what fertilizer is.
limbodog | 42 minutes ago
>For decades, researchers have tried to get bacteria to fix nitrogen for staple crops. Until recently, the approach was to collect wild strains of nitrogen-fixing bacteria from soil and apply them to seeds or spray them onto plants. “It doesn’t work,” says Jean-Michel Ané, a bioengineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is working on microbial fertilizers. The wild microbes fail to thrive when applied to crops that don’t provide them with carbon.
Sounds like they should have been trying to tweak the grains instead.
But all in all what they're doing sounds really promising. If they can even remove 40% of the synthetic fertilizer that would be absolutely huge!
kallicks | 7 hours ago
You can't replace fertilizer with "bacteria"...you can replace many "standard" fertilizers with "algae" based'? Fertilizers. It's kind of like using chelated nutrients. - - Mafty
udarnai | 11 hours ago
Sooo, still something man made and patented. Because why see which plants have a symbiotic relation and group the accordingly for each zone they thrive in, when we can plant genetically engineered corn and plant all over the world, and sprinkle that with some genetically engineered bacteria, just for the fun of it. /s
apophis-pegasus | 7 hours ago
> Because why see which plants have a symbiotic relation and group the accordingly for each zone they thrive in
We want to have a bit more control than that.
SacredGeometry9 | 5 hours ago
If you remove matter from an ecosystem, like when taking crops from a field to send to market, you need to replace that matter otherwise you deplete the soil. That’s what fertilizer is.