This is an extremely hard problem. I've been following efforts to replace nitrogen for around forty years. It's part of a bigger trend of the seed industry grabbing a larger portion of the crop production dollar.
It's the science of GMO's. We've replaced some insecticides by letting the plants produce their own. We've eliminated some herbicides (weed sprays) by producing resistance in the plant to first Roundup and later other herbicides. It's truly one of the scientific miracles of the past thirty years.
Yet it has had strong opposition by the very people, organic advocates, that it benefits the most. This saddens me greatly. The very people who run around advocating 'listen to the scientists' on some issues, then selectively don't listen to them on others.
Not supporting Monsanto's business model isn't the same thing as not 'listen[ing] to scientists'.
The issues with blanket application of Glysophate combined with roundup resistant crops are real; application volumes have ballooned and we still don't have a scientific consensus on it's effects on humans. Ignoring, in the immediate, the potential health effects of the molecule, it is also a driving force in the expansion of monoculture techniques rather than more sustainable polycultures.
Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. The Irish potato famine, the lightning quick elimination of the Gros Michel clones, etc.
I won't get into the myriad legal issues surrounding Roundup, terminator seeds, etc. but they aren't theoretical either.
This isn't to say there's no benefit from Glyphosate application. It's to say opposition towards it is not driven by scientific illiteracy. Quite the opposite.
It's not so straightforward. Those with financial interests in the matter manipulate opinion and pay for lopsided science. That's why many globally and especially in the US still 'doubt' climate change. The evidence today is overwhelming but 20 years ago was still more muddled as Shell & co were funding biased studies, while experts and environmentalists were screaming for action and simply ignored. And still today there are media (in the US) telling their audience that it's not real, pointing to some pseudoscience to make this claim. Science is messy, can be biased and we have to rely on third parties to communicate it.
The same problem for nuclear: it's not self-contradictory to be eager for low-co2 energy and oppose nuclear due to its large-scale damage in case of an incident (and with Fukushima, 3Mile, Tchernobyl and various smaller incidents it's not like this is just theory).
It's similar with GMO: there are some studies showing risks and various GMO plants have been stopped due to concerns they could be harmful. Roundup is not exaxtly harmless but rather leaves ecological deserts behind - even if you are in favour of GMOs (like golden rice) you might still oppose some of them (like roundup ready plants), specifically because of doubts about the corporate-funded science by the agri-businesses behind them. Or you might oppose them on economic/social grounds, e.g. the practice of sterilising seeds which already has driven many farmers in level 1 and 2 (aka developing) countries into economic disaster.
Trust the science? Most environmentalists will agree. Trust the science funded by and the actual implementation by Monsanto? A much harder sell, akin to trusting BP's studies on climate and emissions.
I find this post insightful generally but I don't think the last sentence was necessary. It is possible to be an organic advocate irrespective of "listening to the scientists" on this or any other topic. Constructing and attacking this straw man doesn't really add anything to your post.
I think GMO's are disliked not just because of gene editing, but the decidedly non-organic way that GMO's are typically grown. My understanding is that GMOs are typically used on industrial scale monocrop farms, with pesticides. So it gets tarnished by association.
> We've replaced some insecticides by letting the plants produce their own.
So, you traded insecticide application to it being pre-aplied into the plants. That isn't reducing the amount of them out there.
Yes, there are some gains, like in there being no environmental contamination due to the application. There are also some losses, like in there being long-term environmental application due to contaminated bio-matter.
> We've eliminated some herbicides (weed sprays) by producing resistance in the plant to first Roundup and later other herbicides.
No we didn't. We traded larger amounts of less effective herbicides into lower amounts of incredibly effective ones.
On both cases, there are plenty of details, gains and loses that could be weighted in a public argument and settled down into policy. But the fact is that Monsanto didn't want public arguments, so they got their goals written into laws by the dirtiest possible procedures (really, on my country the entire legislative process was completely illegal) and got the public argument shut down with claims of it being "anti-science" or similar things. Those are not markers of socially positive actors.
Insecticides and herbicides are famously trouble for stomach bacteria, among many other things.
And yet that's getting ignored here...
Making the plants produce them directly just makes the plants a lot less safe for human consumption.
(I've a bunch of related allergies and intolerances and am tired of the IBS and pain related)
I don’t see how burning huge rainforest areas for monoculture corn plantations that now produce part of the insecticides that you use on their own and that you use tons of herbicides on to keep everything else out is in any way leading to more sustainability.
Very exciting. As an outsider looking into the world of academic science, though, I am genuinely curious as to what about this paper took 13 years? The article mentions research by the team began in 2005, and only finished in 2018. Was it just the time needed to watch multiple generations of the corn grow? Anywho, fascinating stuff.
There's a better way to add nitrogen to soil and it's through the nitrogen cycle. The US Midwest (which grows a lot of corn) used to be highly populated with ruminants who did exactly this.
We killed them all (well, most) and now grow corn which we use most to finish off cattle, which is also a ruminant.
Maybe a better solution would be to feed the ruminants off the land now used by the corn? Imagine what that might do.
This IS a nitrogen cycle. Sure it would be great to utilize waste nitrogen as well but that doesn't take away from this.
Btw this is how lagumes fix nitrogen. This nothing new but since it is already in maze it can probably be crossbred into production corn lines without that toxic GMO label.
This would seem like a good candidate for regular old cross-breeding.
People in the past would select which seeds and plants to cross breed by hand.
You could imagine an automated system which could cross breed 1 billion (1e9) plants at once by using cameras and ML techniques looking for good traits on each plant, using just 3% of US farmland. It doesn't need perfection - a 10% error rate simply requires 10% more plants, so it's a perfect application of ML.
The same plants you're using for breeding can still be producing sellable corn, so the cost of this selective breeding program on a per-plant basis is nearly zero.
These days people are doing selective breeding by simply sequencing genes. It can produce the same results as transplanting genes in a matter of months for a lot of plants (because they don't use normal procreation).
It's not cheaper or faster.
And of course, now there's a massive debate whether this is GMO or not.
It does. This landrace grows in areas receiving high rainfall, and with high ambient humidity -- and in my experience it only produces the mucus in those conditions, which sadly is likely to limit its potential, at least without very significant extra breeding work.
I've skimmed this and will dig further (it's certainly interesting stuff) but one alternative needs considering is that it's there to attract animals which somehow leave nitrogen by other means - perhaps droppings? Or that eave offal? or are killed by other carnivores? Something else?
This seems like it would lose an appreciable amount of water, but perhaps not nearly as much as transpiration. But in most places water is a cheaper input than nitrogen.
I mean, why can't we live on sunlight, or purely on carbohydrates and trace elements? Organisms evolve for their environments; if something in your diet or the environment is producing enough of (whatever) for your needs, there's not much evolutionary pressure to produce it yourself. Or even keep the machinery for producing it in working order, if you have it.
Vitamins are a good example, we need them, but we don't produce them (except for D, but there are practical problems producing that in the environments and latitudes in which humans now live).
Apparently it is not making nitrogen at all, but splitting aerial nitrogen and binding it into bigger molecules.
Making nitrogen would be an impressive achievement for anybody, never mind a plant. Probably easiest is to make a lot of hydrocarbons with deuterium substituted for the regular hydrogen, and pack that around a source of free neutrons. The neutrons would lose energy to the deuteriums, and end up slow enough to be absorbed by the carbon nuclei, which would become nitrogen after a few steps. Also the deuterium would become tritium and then helium. Plants probably could concentrate deuterium. Where plants would get free neutrons is a poser; some plants will concentrate radionuclides from soil...
But of course there's already plenty of nitrogen in the air.
[+] [-] rmason|5 years ago|reply
It's the science of GMO's. We've replaced some insecticides by letting the plants produce their own. We've eliminated some herbicides (weed sprays) by producing resistance in the plant to first Roundup and later other herbicides. It's truly one of the scientific miracles of the past thirty years.
Yet it has had strong opposition by the very people, organic advocates, that it benefits the most. This saddens me greatly. The very people who run around advocating 'listen to the scientists' on some issues, then selectively don't listen to them on others.
[+] [-] ABCLAW|5 years ago|reply
The issues with blanket application of Glysophate combined with roundup resistant crops are real; application volumes have ballooned and we still don't have a scientific consensus on it's effects on humans. Ignoring, in the immediate, the potential health effects of the molecule, it is also a driving force in the expansion of monoculture techniques rather than more sustainable polycultures.
Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. The Irish potato famine, the lightning quick elimination of the Gros Michel clones, etc.
I won't get into the myriad legal issues surrounding Roundup, terminator seeds, etc. but they aren't theoretical either.
This isn't to say there's no benefit from Glyphosate application. It's to say opposition towards it is not driven by scientific illiteracy. Quite the opposite.
[+] [-] nelaboras|5 years ago|reply
The same problem for nuclear: it's not self-contradictory to be eager for low-co2 energy and oppose nuclear due to its large-scale damage in case of an incident (and with Fukushima, 3Mile, Tchernobyl and various smaller incidents it's not like this is just theory).
It's similar with GMO: there are some studies showing risks and various GMO plants have been stopped due to concerns they could be harmful. Roundup is not exaxtly harmless but rather leaves ecological deserts behind - even if you are in favour of GMOs (like golden rice) you might still oppose some of them (like roundup ready plants), specifically because of doubts about the corporate-funded science by the agri-businesses behind them. Or you might oppose them on economic/social grounds, e.g. the practice of sterilising seeds which already has driven many farmers in level 1 and 2 (aka developing) countries into economic disaster.
Trust the science? Most environmentalists will agree. Trust the science funded by and the actual implementation by Monsanto? A much harder sell, akin to trusting BP's studies on climate and emissions.
[+] [-] mulmen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etaioinshrdlu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|5 years ago|reply
So, you traded insecticide application to it being pre-aplied into the plants. That isn't reducing the amount of them out there.
Yes, there are some gains, like in there being no environmental contamination due to the application. There are also some losses, like in there being long-term environmental application due to contaminated bio-matter.
> We've eliminated some herbicides (weed sprays) by producing resistance in the plant to first Roundup and later other herbicides.
No we didn't. We traded larger amounts of less effective herbicides into lower amounts of incredibly effective ones.
On both cases, there are plenty of details, gains and loses that could be weighted in a public argument and settled down into policy. But the fact is that Monsanto didn't want public arguments, so they got their goals written into laws by the dirtiest possible procedures (really, on my country the entire legislative process was completely illegal) and got the public argument shut down with claims of it being "anti-science" or similar things. Those are not markers of socially positive actors.
[+] [-] teunispeters|5 years ago|reply
(I've a bunch of related allergies and intolerances and am tired of the IBS and pain related)
I'm otherwise a fan of GMO.
[+] [-] legulere|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkaic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouc|5 years ago|reply
The wikipedia page on aerial roots [0] needs some love. There's also another similar article about this corn [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_root
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeba...
[+] [-] mcgt|5 years ago|reply
We killed them all (well, most) and now grow corn which we use most to finish off cattle, which is also a ruminant.
Maybe a better solution would be to feed the ruminants off the land now used by the corn? Imagine what that might do.
[+] [-] mohaine|5 years ago|reply
Btw this is how lagumes fix nitrogen. This nothing new but since it is already in maze it can probably be crossbred into production corn lines without that toxic GMO label.
[+] [-] adrianN|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quixoticelixer-|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
People in the past would select which seeds and plants to cross breed by hand.
You could imagine an automated system which could cross breed 1 billion (1e9) plants at once by using cameras and ML techniques looking for good traits on each plant, using just 3% of US farmland. It doesn't need perfection - a 10% error rate simply requires 10% more plants, so it's a perfect application of ML.
The same plants you're using for breeding can still be producing sellable corn, so the cost of this selective breeding program on a per-plant basis is nearly zero.
[+] [-] candiodari|5 years ago|reply
It's not cheaper or faster.
And of course, now there's a massive debate whether this is GMO or not.
[+] [-] henearkr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielheath|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tnjm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_pdp09|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wollstonecraft|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FriedPickles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|5 years ago|reply
Vitamins are a good example, we need them, but we don't produce them (except for D, but there are practical problems producing that in the environments and latitudes in which humans now live).
[+] [-] rezmason|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosstex|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k2enemy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnhenry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark-r|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
Making nitrogen would be an impressive achievement for anybody, never mind a plant. Probably easiest is to make a lot of hydrocarbons with deuterium substituted for the regular hydrogen, and pack that around a source of free neutrons. The neutrons would lose energy to the deuteriums, and end up slow enough to be absorbed by the carbon nuclei, which would become nitrogen after a few steps. Also the deuterium would become tritium and then helium. Plants probably could concentrate deuterium. Where plants would get free neutrons is a poser; some plants will concentrate radionuclides from soil...
But of course there's already plenty of nitrogen in the air.
[+] [-] callesgg|5 years ago|reply
Haha, that would be something!