Soybean is unique among major grain crops because it can get much of its nitrogen from the atmosphere through biological ...

Nitrogen is a critical limiting element for plant growth and production. It is a major component of chlorophyll, the most important pigment needed for photosynthesis, as well as amino acids, the key ...

When cover crops became a hot topic a few years ago, I tried to relabel them as “forage-covers” because they are multiuse ...

Nitrogen is vital for all known life. Yet most nitrogen on Earth is in the atmosphere as di-nitrogen gas, which many organisms can’t use. Fortunately, there are microbes that can tap into this ...

A typical day for Jieshun Lin began with a long bus ride to the greenhouses. “For 10 hours each day, I would pull up plants and wash their roots, looking carefully at each individual plant. [Up to] 10 ...

Most organisms require nitrogen to produce biological molecules, such as nucleotides and amino acids, but until recently, only prokaryotes were known to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. “It’s a very ...

It has puzzled scientists for years whether and how bacteria, that live from dissolved organic matter in marine waters, can carry out N 2 fixation. It was assumed that the high levels of oxygen ...

A new evaluation of biological nitrogen fixation for inland and coastal waters concludes that these habitats are an overlooked but important source of fixation globally. Robinson Fulweiler and ...

An oxygen sensor protein protects the enzymatic machinery of biological nitrogen fixation from serious damage, and its use in biotechnology could help to reduce the use of synthetic fertilizer in ...