Saving Our Waterways by Using Less Fertilizer

Professor Thomas Knight of the University of Southern Maine is developing a new genetic technique for helping farmers improve yields in oat growth while reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that runs off into rivers and waterways. Oat plants rely primarily on their roots to metabolize nitrogen. Dr. Knight wants to make the plant's use of nitrogen more efficient by extending nitrogen metabolism to the plant's leaves too. These enhanced plants will be more productive and develop more fully and quickly while requiring less nitrogen fertilizer. This in turn means less nitrogen run-off into fragile water environments where nitrogen can do great harm. As a side benefit, it could also mean less carbon dioxide, a compound that many believe is contributing to global warming. Dr. Knight's work suggests that it may be possible to fix more carbon dioxide in plant leaves and thus remove a greater amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because of this possible added impact, not only is the Department of Agriculture following his experiments with oats, so is the Department of Energy.