Biotech Updates

Major Investment to Persuade Bacteria to Help Cereals Self-Fertilize

July 20, 2012

It is recorded that fertilizer technology during the green revolution gave an important boost to yield and productivity of staple cereal crops. Excessive application however comes with environmental cost as half of the carbon footprint comes from fertilizer use in agriculture. To come up with a more environment and efficient technology for nitrogen use, a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to John Innes Center (JIC) was launched to investigate the possibility of engineering cereals to associate with nitrogen-fixing bacteria which will be possibly delivered through seed.

The investigation will focus on engineering maize to make it receptive and sense nitrogen fixing soil bacteria towards a symbiosis for nitrogen fixation. A slight increase in this signaling machinery would be an important step for farmers who do not have access to fertilizers. Professor Giles Oldroyd of JIC is hopeful that previous information on symbiotic relationship with bacteria and plants that have evolved through time to become an essential feature of legumes would also occur in the engineered corn. "In the long term, we anticipate that the research will follow the evolutionary path, building up the level of complexity and improving the benefits to the plant," said Professor Oldroyd.

See the news release at  http://news.jic.ac.uk/2012/07/cereals-self-fertilise/