Nitrogen Management Breakthrough

Besides water, nitrogen is probably our most difficult crop nutrient to manage.  That seems odd because we are surrounded by nitrogen.  We breathe in much more nitrogen than oxygen.  The problem is that atmospheric nitrogen is not available to most plants.  Lightening converts a small amount of atmospheric nitrogen to plat available form, but before the nitrogen fertilizer most farms got needed plat available nitrogen from animal and human waste and from growing legumes.  No-till Farmer recently shared an article about researchers in England who have found a bacteria that can help any plant to capture atmospheric nitrogen.  It will be interesting to see if this breakthrough is really implemented in 3 to 5 years as the researchers envision.