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Scientific Breakthrough Increases Plant Yields By One Third (wsu.edu)
Slashdot reader schwit1 writes, "Plant scientists have found a way to encourage plants to better use atmospheric nitrogen, thus increasing yields by more than one third. The technique not only produces healthier plants and more seeds, it reduces the need for fertilizer, the overuse of which can be an environmental issue." From WSU News:
For years, scientists have tried to increase the rate of nitrogen [conversion] in legumes by altering...interactions that take place between the bacterioid and the root nodule cells. [Washington State University biologist Mechthild] Tegeder took a different approach: She increased the number of proteins that help move nitrogen from the rhizobia bacteria to the plant's leaves, seed-producing organs and other areas where it is needed. The additional transport proteins sped up the overall export of nitrogen from the root nodules.
This initiated a feedback loop that caused the rhizobia to start fixing more atmospheric nitrogen, which the plant then used to produce more seeds. "They are bigger, grow faster and generally look better than natural soybean plants," Tegeder said.
This initiated a feedback loop that caused the rhizobia to start fixing more atmospheric nitrogen, which the plant then used to produce more seeds. "They are bigger, grow faster and generally look better than natural soybean plants," Tegeder said.
... our new legume overlords.
So, are we going to be overrun by soy bean plants whose growth is now stuck in a feedback loop?
This isn't gloom-and-doom "humans are TEH EVUL!!!" misanthropy?!?!?!
What's it doing here?
Can it be applied to a non-garbage plant? Something other than soy, which is one of the most god awful things you can put in your body - industrial processing to make it edible and hormone-like effects abound....
This is all a sinister plot by big agriculture to poison us all with nitrogen, amirite? They're just looking for ways to stuff more nitrogen and other fillers into our food supply!
Wait until anti-science folks realize this is GMO.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
what about the adverse health effects from consuming legumes? They never were an appropriate food for humans, and that's not going to change.
Post when they invent Salmon that can be farmed by sunlight only - and still have the Omega-3s.
Wouldn't that be wild? Salmon with grass green skin?
Now all we have to do is increase the other plant food, CO2 and the world will plenty of food.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Honestly, this is a good example of why we shouldn't panic about rising population levels- our farming efficiency growth exceeds our population growth.
Why didn't natural selection already "discover" this? Perhaps there's a big trade-off that hasn't been discovered yet.
Table-ized A.I.
Higher crop yield and less fertilizer? Maybe the prices will drop, but probably not.
That's a breakthrough. It will be interesting to see if this can stack up with induced nodule growth methods
Here's yet another chance to grow more food in a world where billions of people don't have enough, but I am 100 percent certain the anti-GMO pro-hunger gang will oppose it, as they have with so many other opportunities.
Ever since cannabis was legalized for recreational purposes every day there's a new magic breakthrough fertilizer or grow media that will boost your yields by 1/3rd i promise.
Hell if you mix all that shit together you are guaranteed to be growing 20 ton weed plants in your closet.
You're good with links so please show where Trump and his supports are anti-gay? You're probably confusing Trump with Hillary who happily takes money from the leaders of countries where being gay results in the death penalty. Or maybe me who happily buys gas refined from oil purchased from countries where being gay results in the death penalty.
Can't wait for this to cross over to the Venus Flytraps or other endearing little pretties. Or twisted proteins having unexpected results. Despite the rigorous and extended testing that was tirelessly carried out before being approved by top financial CEOs.
I have heard that genetic modified food causes autism.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Perhaps there needs to be some kind of "I am kidding" tag for situations like this. Like /S... maybe I should do this:
<JustKidding> Jk! Jk! Jk! </JustKidding>
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
An economist is walking through the park with his son. "Look, Dad! There's a $20 under that bench!" Dad says, "Don't be absurd... if there was, someone would have picked it up."
we're gonna do this come hell or high water. It's the only way to feed everybody. With our aging population we're gonna need higher crop yields per unite of labor or we're gonna have mass starvation.
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Isnt this how bad science fiction movies usually start.. some well intentioned invention and next thing you know some unexpected plague or mutant is terrorizing the planet! Damn scientists, have you learned nothing from popular media?!?!?!?
This
It's electrolytes isn't it? The taste that plants crave?
More and bigger plants will also mean even faster exhaustion of micro-nutrients from the soil. Since not all the biomass produced in that soil is being recycled into it - the whole point of agriculture is our removal and use of parts of the plants - then the soil will slowly be exhausted of its non-infinite supply of those nutrients. The future results is food crops that contain less of those micro-nutrients, leaving future generations that consume them with a deficit. We've already seen this effect in the last century or less. A very deliberate effort could be made to restore what is exhausted, but this is COMMERCIAL agriculture FOR PROFIT; money is the ultimate motivation, not long-term soil health or the health of people who eat what grows from it.
Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can’t, for example, insert “the genes for an elephant’s trunk” into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants’ talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant.
—Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
“Nonlinear Genetics”
Decades ago plants were already being made to give better yields through natural means. Examples - George E. Smith, Luther Burbank, and I'm sure more.
Have gnu, will travel.
you, insensitive clod!
Simplified, Natural selection is only about competitive advantage to reproduction and escape predator to come to reproduction age. It is not about the *most* efficient ways to get there, but sometimes simply just be a bit better than the other species. As such, it can simply stay stuck at a local minima if there is no selection pressure. In other word, there is not always a trade off. Sometimes it is simply that there is no selection pressure where this could bring something to the plant reproduction.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
I think every human being should be able to own 1 square mile of land.
Of course that means we only have room for 57 million people.
The Earth is about 1250% over populated by my standard.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
From the Slashdot article: "Tegeder designed a novel way to increase the flow of nitrogen, an essential nutrient, from specialized bacteria in soybean root nodules to the seed-producing organs."
From: http://www.saynotogmos.org/kle...
"In the early 1990s a European genetic engineering company was preparing to field test and then commercialize on a major scale a genetically engineered soil bacteria called Klebsiella planticola. The bacteria had been tested--as it turns out in a careless and very unscientific mannner--by scientists working for the biotech industry and was believed to be safe for the environment. Fortunately a team of independent scientists, headed by Dr. Elaine Ingham of Oregon State University, decided to run their own tests on the gene-altered Klebsiella planticola. What they discovered was not only startling, but terrifying--the biotech industry had created a biological monster--a genetically engineered microorganism that would kill all terrestrial plants. After Ingham's expose, of course the gene-altered Klebsiella planticola was never commercialized. But as Ingham points out, the lack of pre-market safety testing of other genetically altered organisms virtually guarantees that future biological monsters will be released into the environment."
Kitazawa Seed Company (kitazawaseed.com) -- Over a hundred years old and survived interment during WW2! Major kinds of seed for most asian cuisine.
Baker Creek Seed Company (rareseeds.com) -- Nationally recognized anti-GMO seed grower/finder/seller/redistributor. Lots to read here too.
There are dozens or hundreds of other companies just across the US, and Baker Creek has projects going with lots of other trial farm projects worldwide.
(Unrelated to either mentioned company, but a proud customer/supporter of both!)
Nutrient levels in vegetables are down sharply since the 1930s and even down since the 1980s.
https://www.scientificamerican...
A landmark study on the topic by Donald Davis and his team of researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austinâ(TM)s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding âoereliable declinesâ in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century. Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.
âoeEfforts to breed new varieties of crops that provide greater yield, pest resistance and climate adaptability have allowed crops to grow bigger and more rapidly,â reported Davis, âoebut their ability to manufacture or uptake nutrients has not kept pace with their rapid growth.â There have likely been declines in other nutrients, too, he said, such as magnesium, zinc and vitamins B-6 and E, but they were not studied in 1950 and more research is needed to find out how much less we are getting of these key vitamins and minerals.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.