Free fertiliser for all crops

This article showed that South African researchers were tracking bacteria that could help maize and other non-legumes bind nitrogen from the air.

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Fertilising crops like maize with costly nitrogen could soon become a thing of the past. South African scientists are working towards full exploitation of nitrogen-binding bacteria such as Rhizobia, which supply soluble nitrogen to most types of legumes. Until recently, Rhizobia have been the only known agent capable of binding nitrogen from the air and feeding it to plants in an acceptable soluble form.

A scientist in Brazil, Dr Johanna Döbereiner, found a spiral type of bacteria in grassroots and proved that it was a source of nitrogen needed by the grass to flourish. She turned her attention to maize when another scientist, researching plant genetics, told her about a certain patch of maize that apparently needed no nitrogen fertilising. She examined it and found the spiral bacteria in the maize plant roots.

There is still research to be done before this breakthrough can be commercially exploited in agriculture, but it has vast potential in protein-starved many countries, and agricultural scientists have intensified their search for nitrogen-binding organisms. In South Africa, microbiologists at the Plant Protection Research Institute are also involved, and the man heading the project is Dr JL Staphorst.