9 ms·
A biotechnology dream: nitrogen-fixing cereal crops
- AngryData 7y agoIll believe it when I see it, cereal crops take an ass ton of nitrogen fertilizer to flourish and that fertilizer takes a lot of energy. Maybe im wrong but I feel like increases in nitrogen self-sufficiency will either A. Not be a huge change in fertilizer usage or B. Result in a an overall loss of yield as the energy goes towards nitrogen production. Hopefully im wrong. The science is good, I just don't think the people using it care enough about good science for that to matter, they will still pump it full of just as much nitrogen before except now they get like .005% higher yield. So they can give their corporate administrators a bonus for utilizing the work and efforts of others and we get jack shit because their object is producing money, not making as much food as possible with the least amount of resources.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago> I just don't think the people using it care enough about good science for that to matter, They care about money. > they will still pump it full of just as much nitrogen before except now they get like .005% higher yield. Why on earth would they do that? Fertilizer is expensive, dude.
- protomyth 7y agoYep, the farmer would be so happy to not have to deal with fertilizer.
- mschuster91 7y ago> Why on earth would they do that? Fertilizer is expensive, dude In Europe we have an utter abundance of fertilizer - we have so many cattle and pigs concentrated in megafarms that we cannot spread their manure any more and have to cart it through half of Europe.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoI think you are being overly critical and paranoid. Legumes do fine and farmers could use less fertilizer if things like wheat could just grab nitrogen out of the air that is 78% nitrogen.
- njarboe 7y agoHopefully, if this comes to fruition, the resultant GMO plants can be looked at on its own merits instead of just being labeled "GMO bad" and not used.
- pjc50 7y agoThat depends on the ownership structure, I think.
- dang 7y agoUrl changed from https://modernfarmer.com/2020/01/mit-is-getting-closer-to-cereal-crops-that-require-no-fertilizer/ https://modernfarmer.com/2020/01/mit-is-getting-closer-to-ce..., which points to this.
- mmettler 7y agoThere are already some startups working on this, including Pivot Bio (nitrogen-fixing for corn using microbiomes in the soil): https://www.pivotbio.com/ https://www.pivotbio.com/
- mrfusion 7y agoI’ve always been surprised by the huge amounts plants can grow with so little nitrogen. I never underdtood how their cells could get enough amino acids.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoMost plants don't contain much protein. The exceptions are legumes (which I believe are also the nitrogen fixers) and nuts -- but even then, the high-protein content is the seeds, not the plant. Where animals are made of protein, plants are made of carbohydrates. They're a different form of life. Don't be fooled by the Whole Foods post claiming "yes, plants have protein". ( https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/yes-plants-have-protein https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/yes-plants... ) They proudly tell you that broccoli has more protein per calorie than steak. That's true. Broccoli also has about 10% the protein content of steak by mass. Steak is an efficient food with a lot of calories. Broccoli is a plant.
- mrfusion 7y agoRight on all that. But plants are made of cells too and cells need amino acids for all the machinery of life. So how do they get away with so much less than animal cells?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIn addition to using proteins for "all the machinery of life", animal cells use them extensively for purely structural reasons. Plants don't do this, so they need much less protein than animals do. This is basically just a repeat of my earlier comment, because I don't really understand what you're asking about. I don't see why it's a mystery that an organism which uses a lot of protein needs to produce much more protein than another organism which uses very little protein.
- Turing_Machine 7y agoMaybe it would help the earlier poster to lay it out more explicitly. The bulk of an animal's structure is made of things like hair, and skin, and muscle, and cartilage, which are made largely of proteins, which in turn contain a lot of nitrogen. The bulk of a plant's structure is made of things like cellulose and lignin, which contain no nitrogen.
- solomonb 7y agoOr you don't monocrop. Plant legumes along with your cereal crops and shift focus from extracting value from the soil to cultivating soil health/wealth.
- Turing_Machine 7y agoEvery corn farmer in the Midwest already alternates corn with soybeans. They've been doing that for many decades.
- bamboozled 7y agoHe says "plant alongside" though? Not alternate.
- dbcurtis 7y agoThose two crops are not compatible to co-plant.
- Turing_Machine 7y agoWhat would this gain for you? Keep in mind that the two are going to require very different planting, cultivation and harvesting timing and technique, so having narrow strips of one alongside the other is going to be a monumental pain in the butt for the farmer (in comparison to having a whole field of one in one year and a whole field of the other in another year). No one is going to do the "plant alongside" thing unless there are massive gains to be had.
- chabes 7y agoWhy spend so much money and resources to make monocropping feasible? Just accept that it’s an unsustainable way to produce food for a growing human population. If a fraction of that money went towards research of alternative agricultural practices, we wouldn’t have to worry about how to produce more nitrogen while simultaneously dealing with the detrimental effects of nitrogen pollution, as we are currently
- susijdjdjxa 7y agoThe funding for this research is minuscule fraction compared to the agriculture industry. Exploring this part of the potential solution space is worthwhile, even if it doesn’t end up being the best way forward. We need to look into all the options to have a chance at finding out what works best. This article is actually about research of an an alternative agricultural process so it’s odd to naysay it in the same comment.
- chabes 7y ago“Alternative practices” as in an alternative to conventional monoculture. This is just another attempt to fix monoculture, because it’s not working
- pfdietz 7y agoMonoculture is working just fine. If you disagree, try to compete with it. Good luck on that.
- 23throwaway23 7y agoIt'd be interesting to actually test this out if we got rid of farm and fossil fuel subsidies that prop up monoculture. Would be an even better comparison if we account for the externalities, like soil erosion and ecocide from pesticide/fertilizer run-off.
- pfdietz 7y ago
- RocketSyntax 7y ago"Cleaning up this pollution and paying for the public health and environmental damage costs the United States $157 billion annually."
- MrBuddyCasino 7y agoMy stance on GMOs changed from pro to very sceptical when I got acquainted with the Talebian viewpoint: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/genetically-modified-organisms-risk-global-ruin-says-black-swan-author-e8836fa7d78 https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/genetically-modifi... Anyone got a good counter argument besides the generic "classical breeding isn't acually safer", which I don't buy without further detailing? The reason I'm asking is that over the years, I was often sceptical about his opinions and the way he presented them, but in the end Taleb always turned out to be right on the few predictions he did make, which is no small feat. If GMOs really are a global systemic risk, this would be an important science fact to get right, and I want to hear all sides. I figured there should be some competent people on HN.
- fl0under 7y agoAlso the problem with GMOs is it transfers ownership of the plant from the public to the large companies that have modified it (as they will inventibly want to patent it). Is it really fair that they take thousands of years of evolution, change a gene or two, and become the sole owner of the strain? And often limiting the ability of the plant to reproduce, so you have to buy more seed from them. If it continues that way the amount of plants available under public ownership will continue to decrease.
- pfdietz 7y agoPlant patents date back to 1930, predating even the discovery that DNA is the genetic material. In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either. That non-issue has been there since before you, and possibly your parents, were born. What keeps the (gasp! shudder!) corporate ownership of these things from sinking us into a dystopian hellscape? Competition. You don't like one kind of hybrid? Buy a different kind. The seed makers compete fiercely for farmers' business. The same is true of GMOs.
- tom_mellior 7y ago> Plant patents date back to 1930 That doesn't mean that they are a good idea. > In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either. And in many other crops Monsanto sues the hell out of farmers who replant the non-hybrid seeds. > Competition. Are there actually seed makers that would not sue their customers for replanting?
- aazaa 7y ago> Eighty percent of chemical nitrogen fertilizers today are made using the Haber-Borsch process, which involves transforming nitrile gas into ammonia. Two errors in one sentence. It's the "Haber-Bosch process", and it transforms nitrogen gas into ammonia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
- sleepyK 7y agoThat's high school chemistry. Surprised people are still getting it wrong.
- Animats 7y agoThere was an article on HN a few months back about some variant of maize found in southern Mexico which can fix nitrogen. The trouble is that it makes the plant less efficient - only one crop per year, and requires a hot climate. There's an overhead cost to plants that can fix nitrogen. It's good to have that capability, though; it's useful for areas with lots of arable land and sun but no good fertilizer source.
- jl2718 7y agoThis may be naive, but I would assume better results from the strategy of engineering the bacteria rather than the chloroplasts/mitochondria. The latter are massively conserved, efficiently coded, and take a long time to iterate along with the host. Bacteria evolve quickly and we have great tools for engineering them. The right variants might already exist naturally; you just need to find a selection mechanism. Alternatively, perhaps getting the crop to express the symbiotic byproduct of legumes might be simpler. Does anybody have insight as to why the Voigt lab chose to do it that way?
- text70 7y agoThe Voight lab does it this way because they are a plant engineering lab and they have a grant to try out the experiments. Simple as that. You would be right to assume that engineering the bacteria would be easier. There are already companies that work to provide specialized nitrogen-fixing bacteria strains for agricultural use. However governmental regulations for using a genetically modified bacteria vs a genetically modified plant for widespread agriculture use are different.
- nyolfen 7y agothis made the rounds a while back, but there’s an heirloom maize strain from mexico that fixes its own nitrogen from the air with a slime membrane: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/corn-future-hundreds-years-old-and-makes-its-own-mucus-180969972/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/corn-future-hu... really mind-blowing stuff.