More on nitrogen-fixing corn

Marcus Woo has a good discussion of this work on Live Science.  My only clarification would be “because yields were so low, those impressive percentages actually translate into a negligible amount of nitrogen.”  In my earlier post, I estimated 5-20 kgN/ha, based on data in their paper, less than 10% of what high-yield corn needs.

2 thoughts on “More on nitrogen-fixing corn”

  1. Hi Ford:
    Have you had a chance to look at Tsikou et al. in the 12 Oct issue of Science? [Science 362: 233, 2018] Systemic control of legume susceptibility to rhizobial infection by a mobile microRNA. Thought of you as soon as I saw it.

    I’ve only peeked so far, but I’m guessing I’ll be taking a closer look. Have to love the creativity for naming certain peptides.

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    1. Thanks, Clem, I hadn’t seen it. I knew signals from shoots were important in controlling nodule numbers, but assumed the “signal” was some nitrogen-rich resource, like an amino acid. Looks like it’s more specific than that.

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