Slashdot Mirror
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.
industrial processing to make it edible and hormone-like effects abound....
Uh, you mean it has to be cooked? Edamame is a delicious dish of straight soybeans........
Also, every food you eat affects your hormones......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wait until anti-science folks realize this is GMO.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Higher crop yield and less fertilizer? Maybe the prices will drop, but probably not.
Leave him alone with his paranoia.
There's also a theory that increased soy products have aided in increased breast sizes, early puberty, and low sperm counts... though it's far from proven.
If that were true, wouldn't regions that eat a lot of tofu have women with generally larger breasts?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But why should we want more people on Earth? We want more productive people on Earth, but the most productive societies in the world tend to have the lowest reproduction rates as their members carefully curate a few offspring rather than spawn prolifically in hopes that a few will survive and care for them in their old age. As automation increasingly eliminates jobs, we should be working on increasing the quality, not the quantity, of people on the Earth.
The "Monsanto sued a farmer for accidental cross pollenation case" is a myth.
The internet is not a series of tubes. It's more like a net. Or a network of computers. Or an internet.
Bollocks, what of all the GE crops like Golden Rice, BioCassava, Bangladeshi Bt Eggplant, and Brazilian golden mosaic virus resistant beans developed exactly for that purpose? These of course are equally opposed by anti-GE activists, probably more so because of how they disprove your claim. Besides that, GE is such a broad term that you might as well say cooking exists solely to make McDonald's money.
What a stupid comment. Do you really think that evolution is ever "done"? If it were beneficial for soybean plants in nature, it may NOT have already evolved simply because it may be an area of their genome that is highly conserved due to the presence of other critical genes nearby, or it may be that the soybean genome is "good enough" such that being able to fix excess atmospheric nitrogen has little to no value to the soybean plant itself. Or, it may be dumb luck that this particular mutation hasn't occurred in a plant that survived for long in the wild for other reasons. Larger, more productive plants is a big deal for humans who eat the plant, but it may not be a particularly exciting or beneficial trait for the plant themselves in a state of nature.
By your argument -
If evolving cancer immunity were beneficial for humans, we'd have already evolved that immunity. I guess cancer is just fine, though.
If evolving wings were beneficial for humans, we'd have already evolved feathery fucking plumage. I guess we can walk, though.
Evolution is not a straight line, you dimwit. It is a random process of mutation, with the results of those random mutations being culled at higher or lower rates from the population based on the mutation's efficacy in helping the organism survive in its current environment.