Enabling Biological Nitrogen Fixation for Cereal Crops in Fertilized Fields
| Autor: | Amy Wen, Alana Horton, Alvin Tamsir, Gabriel Abud, Megan McKellar, Lorena Williams, Allison Johnson, Natalie Hubbard, Junko Maeda, Dominic Soriano, Hannah Elzinga, Valentina Infante, Alice Robinson, Jean-Michel Ane, Judee Sharon, Keira L Havens, James G Lorigan, Rosemary Clark, Zoe Caron, Laura Stupin, Sarah Bloch, Shayin S Gottlieb, Ashley Graham, Farzaneh Rezaei, Richard Broglie, Neal Shah, Mahsa Mohiti-Asli, San-Ming Mak, Karsten Temme, Austin G. Davis-Richardson, Higgins Douglas |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Crops
Agricultural Reactive nitrogen Intensive farming Nitrogen Biomedical Engineering chemistry.chemical_element Agriculture General Medicine engineering.material Biological product Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous) chemistry Agronomy Nitrogen Fixation Nitrogen fixation engineering Environmental science Diazotroph Fertilizer Edible Grain Fertilizers Nitrogen cycle |
| Zdroj: | ACS synthetic biology. 10(12) |
| ISSN: | 2161-5063 |
| Popis: | Agricultural productivity relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, yet half of that reactive nitrogen is lost to the environment. There is an urgent need for alternative nitrogen solutions to reduce the water pollution, ozone depletion, atmospheric particulate formation, and global greenhouse gas emissions associated with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. One such solution is biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), a component of the complex natural nitrogen cycle. BNF application to commercial agriculture is currently limited by fertilizer use and plant type. This paper describes the identification, development, and deployment of the first microbial product optimized using synthetic biology tools to enable BNF for corn (Zea mays) in fertilized fields, demonstrating the successful, safe commercialization of root-associated diazotrophs and realizing the potential of BNF to replace and reduce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use in production agriculture. Derived from a wild nitrogen-fixing microbe isolated from agricultural soils, Klebsiella variicola 137-1036 ("Kv137-1036") retains the capacity of the parent strain to colonize corn roots while increasing nitrogen fixation activity 122-fold in nitrogen-rich environments. This technical milestone was then commercialized in less than half of the time of a traditional biological product, with robust biosafety evaluations and product formulations contributing to consumer confidence and ease of use. Tested in multi-year, multi-site field trial experiments throughout the U.S. Corn Belt, fields grown with Kv137-1036 exhibited both higher yields (0.35 ± 0.092 t/ha ± SE or 5.2 ± 1.4 bushels/acre ± SE) and reduced within-field yield variance by 25% in 2018 and 8% in 2019 compared to fields fertilized with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers alone. These results demonstrate the capacity of a broad-acre BNF product to fix nitrogen for corn in field conditions with reliable agronomic benefits. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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