times article today15 Nov 2019 17:45
In an underground laboratory in the heart of Cambridge a cluster of genetically engineered barley plants are thriving under an artificial sun. The researchers tending to them believe these could be the seeds of a second agricultural revolution that could wean the world off artificial fertilisers.
In the past month scientists in the Sainsbury laboratory at Cambridge University have published two studies that chart a course towards crops that would essentially fertilise themselves. They envisage strains of wheat, maize and rice capable of collecting nitrogen from the air, negating the need for artificial nitrate fertilisers.
They also want to reconnect these crops with a network of underground fungi that helped the first plants to colonise dry land about 450 million years ago. The researchers say they are tantalisingly close to this goal, which could dramatically reduce the use of phosphate fertilisers. After Bill Gates visited for an update last month the British government committed £38 million to partner with his foundation to fund research that includes this work.
Fertilisers are crucial for modern agriculture but overuse is one of the main reasons that most of Britain’s rivers fail EU pollution standards. The production and application of nitrate fertilisers demands heavy use of fossil fuels and creates nitrous oxides, which are potent greenhouse gasses.
The trajectory for crop yields will not nourish the world’s population by 2050. “Meanwhile, small-holder farmers in low-income regions like sub-Sahara Africa are only getting 20 per cent of their potential yields because they cannot access or afford fertilisers. Nutrients, not water, are the limiting factor,” Giles Oldroyd, who is leading the research, said.
Part of his work is focused on giving cereal plants an ability already held by legumes to naturally forge a partnership with a common soil bacteria that can take atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into a form that fuels growth.
Katharina Schiessl, a member of Professor Oldroyd’s team, has discovered that cereal plants already have the basic biological and genetic machinery to do this, which means that a deft piece of genetic rewiring could create a new super crop.
A second strand of the research concerns enhancing the association between plants and soil fungi, known as arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. The fungi form ultra-fine filaments underground which can extract sources of phosphorous that are otherwise unobtainable. In the wild plants plug into this mycorrhizal power grid, supplying the fungi with carbon while trading it for nutrients. In agriculture this system has broken down as fields are flooded with artificial phosphates, leading cereal crops to gather their supply this way.
Professor Oldroyd’s team believe they are close to being able to re-engage the symbiosis, which could dramatically reduce the use of phosphate fertiliser. “Ultimately, if we have all of this working together, then you're looking at e
Sign In
Follow the stocks
