Danish scientists have discovered a small protein region that determines whether plants reject or welcome nitrogen-fixing bacteria. By tweaking only two amino acids, they converted a defensive receptor into one that supports symbiosis. Early success in barley hints that cereals may eventually be engineered to fix nitrogen on their own. Such crops could dramatically reduce fertilizer use and emissions.
It’s hard to overstate how vast a win this could be. Firstly, strongly yielding cereal crops that don’t need fertilizers would be a huge benefit to food security in the world’s poorest and most marginalized places.
Eliminating or drastically reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizers would be a huge win for the environment. Not only does their production and transportation account for at least 2% of global C02 emissions, but their runoff pollution of water bodies is a huge cost, too.
Two residues reprogram immunity receptors for nitrogen-fixing symbiosis
One of those super boring things that will change the world.
Nitrogen affixing grains would be insane
Was sorta wondering when we would start seeing things like this.
Best I can do is war in the middle east or overthrowing south american government, sorry
So, what’s the catch, these plants will outperfotm even the most persisent weeds?
They’ll outperform everything else and spread everywhere, then Monsanto will sue all adjacent land owners for growing those crops illegally, bancrupt them and take their land as payment.
That one futurama episode where pine trees explosively take over the planet, produce too much oxygen, and FWOOSH.
Technological solutions tend to cause just more and bigger problems. Why not change the processes that need to change anyway to transform agriculture into a sustainable activity? Like producing and distributing food locally, vegan, around the year, outside, and without fossil fuel based fertilizer. Furthermore, nitrogen being obtained by the plants themselves does nothing to solve the broken nitrogen cycle as long as nitrogen gets still flushed into waters instead of being collected and returned to the farmlands. You can’t fix an ecologically flawed process by attaching high-tech gimmicks.
Downside is that it gives the plants a “slight” craving for human flesh.
Perhaps this is what Al Gore was “super cereal” about
When did the Danish start dominating the world in the most innovative tech humanity has ever seen? They’ve been on fire. Is this the power of a dynamic free market with a strong social system?
Insane.
