Plants need three things to grow: air, water and nutrients. Farmers usually take care of the last bit by fertilizing their fields. But now scientists have found a type of corn that seems to thrive on air and water alone.
The corn variety hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, where it typically grows in nitrogen-poor soils. Nitrogen is needed for proteins, DNA and the chlorophyll that let plants perform photosynthesis. But the Oaxacan corn does well despite the bad soil, and with little or no fertilization.
The plants pull off this trick via thick, red, aerial roots that protrude from its stem—above the ground—that ooze out a clear goo packed with sugars. That slime is the perfect habitat for nitrogen-fixing bacteria: a sugar-rich, oxygen-poor environment where the microbes transform nitrogen gas into a soluble form the corn plant can use. It’s an above-ground version of the nitrogen-fixation you might usually think of as happening in the underground roots of legumes, like peas and beans.
Date: August 7, 2018
Image: Google Images
Coordinator: EnvGuide Team
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/corn-variety-grabs-fertilizer-from-the-air/