MadSci Network: Botany |
Theoretically it may someday be possible to take bacterial genes for nitrogen fixation and incorporate them in the plant so that a bacterium is not required for nitrogen fixation but it would probably be very difficult. When genetic engineering first began, there were bold predictions that genes for nitrogen fixation would be tranferred from beans to corn so corn would not need nitrogen fertilizer. However, this has not been accomplished because it was more complicated than the genetic engineers realized. Also, even if it is done, the corn yield will probably be reduced because biological nitrogen fixation has a very high energy requirement.
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