Corn.
It's the dominant crop of the developed world.
A highly valuable commodity used to make food and fuel.
But in order to grow, corn needs nitrogen.
And although nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere, it's not in a form that corn can use.
So, like most commercial crops, corn, or maize, gets its nitrogen from synthetic fertilizer.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has helped to feed billions of people,
preventing massive global starvation.
But, it comes at a cost.
Over 80 billion dollars a year globally.
Over 11 billion in the U.S. alone.
One to two of the Earth's energy supply is used to make the fertilizer, creating
one to two percent of world's carbon footprint.
Then, even more energy is used to transport and apply it.
And much of the nitrogen escapes in the form of greenhouse gases.
And fertilizer also runs off the fields, ending up in our water ways, causing an enormous
dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
It's a huge problem and it's getting worse every year.
But, in the mountains of Mexico, there's an indigenous variety of corn grown in an isolated
community for centuries, near where corn first originated.
A unique trait appeared to have evloved in this type of corn:
Nitrogen Fixation.
This corn appears to be a able to fix the nitrogen from the atmosphere into a usable
form.
Biological nitrogen fixation describes a plant's ability to pull in and use nitrogen from the
atmosphere instead of requiring fertilizer.
This occurs when an enzyme called nitrogenase converts atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia,
which can be used by a plant for growth.
This cutting edge research has its roots decades ago, when Howard-Yana Shapiro, who is now
Mars' Chief Agricultural Officer, observed this unique corn in a small community in Mexico.
We didn't have the next generation equipment, the next sequencers, we didn't have a way
to analyze this.
And the whole notion of micro-biomes and meta-genomics wasn't even invented.
So it's great to live long enough to have the science catch up to answer a question
that you have.
This corn generates a series of aerial roots.
Turns out this is an extremely unique morphological trait.
The indigenous corn produces large amounts of mucilage from aerial roots between three
to six months after planting.
During certain times of the year, there's a secretion of mucilage or mucigel which you can physically
see dripping off the roots.
This meucelage provides a low-oxygen and sugar-rich environment for the diverse microbes.
This serves as a sight for nitrogen fixation.
The mucilage provides a unique home or environment for these bacteria that fix nitrogen.
They can restrict the diffusion of oxygen and oxygen kills the ability of bacteria to
fix nitrogen.
So the mucilage restricts oxygen, creates a low oxygen environment, and it provides
sugars; it's feeding the bacteria.
So classic symbiosis.
It's really the wisdom of the Mars family that made that possible
through direct funding to the University of California, Davis.
They understood what would happen if you
could reduce or eliminate the nitrogen applied to
agricultural fields around the world.