Stop to harmful fertilisers

Stop to harmful fertilizers

Finding a suitable type of soil and avoid modern fertilizers became one of the major focuses on agriculture. This issue moved to form the field to the homegrown environment and further, for astrobiological purposes. Understanding basic needs for every crop became clear to humans from very ancient times but new plants have new necessities. Molecular biology and genetics helped us engineer plants towards our needs and now we can increase particular bio and chemical content such as the number of proteins or we can enrich plants with specific vitamins.

To be able to do so, sometimes there is no need for high science solutions. Improving rhizome quality, understanding symbionts, and their relations is the first step. Adding a proper type of fungi to the soil, which will later attach to the plant's root and form a symbiosis, is all that is needed. Fungi will later collect nutrients for our plant and the number of minerals and vitamins in the grown plant will be higher than usual. Knowing this simple and yet functional solution helped us growing plants in different environments and even stop an aggressive agricultural approach which included dangerous fertilizers.

Modern chemical fertilizers often cause toxic algal blooms and biodiversity loss. Such a problem can severely affect a specific part of the ecosystem for a long time. Another interesting fact about rhizome pro-solutions is its usage for the soil revitalization. These days, crops with rhizomes can improve the quality of the soil which was previously overused. A great example of united solutions presented above is given with legume plants. Previously engineered to over-express a gene responsible for effective synthesis of trehalose (an anti-freezing type of sugar used by plants), legumes have also increased effectiveness for nitrogen fixation. This became possible after rhizobia inoculation.