Figure 1: Pterocarpus officinalis, a symbiotic nitrogen-fixing tree in the Fabaceae family, in a remote tropical forest at the Bladen Nature Reserve, Belize. STEVEN W. BREWER ...

The as-yet uncultivated nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium known as UCYN-A is widely distributed in the world's oceans. Metagenomic analysis has shown it to lack genes for the oxygen-producing ...

By partnering with soil microbes, nitrogen-fixing trees turn atmospheric nitrogen gas into a form of nitrogen that is available to plants. When fixers shed their leaves, they enrich soils with ...

How nitrogen fixing works . Before planting a cover crop, Gaskin said it helps to understand how legumes fix nitrogen into the soil. The bacteria with which legumes have a symbiotic — mutually ...

The aerial roots, in other words, are hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria and using them to fertilise the surrounding soil. Hence the lack of need for fertiliser or crop rotation.

In two recent papers, an international team led by UC Santa Cruz scientists describe the first known nitrogen-fixing organelle within a eukaryotic cell. The organelle is the fourth example in history ...

Biological nitrogen-fixing is a process of great agricultural and ecological interest, given that nitrogen, after water and carbon, is the nutrient that most limits vegetable growth and crop ...

Nitrogen-fixing trees can fertilize the soil with the help of partner bacteria. It has remained a puzzle why these trees do not become more prevalent in nitrogen-poor tropical forests.

Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. However, only a very small number of plants, most notably legumes (such as peas, ...

Humanity depends on nitrogen to fertilize croplands, but growing global use is damaging the environment and threatening human health. How can we chart a more sustainable path? Billions of people ...

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are a crucial, if largely unknown, part of our ecosystem. They're how plants and animals get nitrogen from the air.

For example, legumes house nitrogen-fixing microbes in small nodules on their roots. However, these mutualisms only occur in a small number of plants and a scant number of crop species.