Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce need for added fertilizer

Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by phkahler on Thursday August 09, 2018 @07:56AM (#17723361)

Probably not. It doesn't actually fix its own nitrogen. This corn has a bunch of roots that don't touch the ground. It then produces an environment in/on those roots that is conducive to the growth of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This is very much not a case of having a couple genes that could be transferred to other plants.

To get modern corn to do this will probably require a lot of breeding to bring together and select for the traits of both varieties.

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Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by dejv on Thursday August 09, 2018 @09:56AM (#17724190)

Thats interesting, grapevines are using same mechanism to get the nitrogen, but the real problem is that once you introduce artifical source of digestable version of nitrogen, plant decide that it is not worth of investing into this ecosystem and it gets addicted on this supply.

Maybe this is quite common trait in other plant species and it is just not propagated due to the availability of nitrogen?

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Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by rripken on Thursday August 09, 2018 @11:58AM (#17725314)

Can you link to more info about grapes fixing nitrogen? I've never heard of that.

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Re:Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce ne... by dejv on Thursday August 09, 2018 @01:21PM (#17726255)

Seems like there are not that much information available in English. I am based in Europe and most of research I am familiar with comes from other languages sources (German, French).

I found one source that looks promissing, but I haven't really read it: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-015-0329-7

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