WINNIPEG – Cereals making their own nitrogen from the air: For producers staring at a fertilizer dealer’s invoice, that thought warms the heart.
Legume crops are known for their ability to absorb nitrogen from the air and fix it into a plant digestible element. It is not the plant itself that fixes the N, rather a bacterium that lives inside the cell walls of its roots.
Various strains of rhizobium live and reproduce in legume crops and other plants. Some are more efficient at fixing the otherwise atmosphere-bound fertilizer.
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The scientific search for a variety of the bacteria that would cause cereal crops to fix their own N has come to the University of Manitoba.
Kevin Vessey, a U of M professor and plant microbiologist, is raising wheat varieties from around the world, hoping one might contain the necessary plant structures that will host a newly discovered N-fixing rhizobia.
Research into rhizobium bacteria that dwell in and fix N in sugar cane stem walls has been taking place in Brazil for 20 years. In 1988 a new species, Acetobacter diazotropicus, was found and this is the focus of Vessey’s work. Unlike its legume-hosted cousin, it thrives and reproduces in the richer oxygen environment of cereal stems.
Vessey said he and his team, Bo Pan, a post-doctorate fellow and technician Bert Luit, along with research scientist Zhongmin Dong from St. Mary’s University in Halifax, hope to establish an understanding of the plant’s internal structure and how this affects the movement of the infection.
“If we can determine the characteristics that favor the bacteria in sugar cane, then we may be able to translate that into similarly structured wheat and begin the process of selectively breeding (wheat) for those traits,” said Vessey.
“It may not be tomorrow, but people are scouring the world looking for varieties of wheat that will be able to fix nitrogen. It is only a matter of time until we or someone else makes it happen.”
Researchers say they feel the inability to provide nitrogen to a cereal plant, either through economics or agronomics, is one of the major limiting factors in modern cereal production.
Vessey has some funding from Cargill and is seeking grants from the Canadian government for his project.
– RAINE
