Rare corn can self-fertilise [video] | Hacker News Reader

Rare corn can self-fertilise [video]

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71 pointsdsalaj19 comments

Title is very misleading. Perhaps it should be “Rare corn can fix its own nitrogen”

Incredibly cool though.

That's arguably even cooler. It's such an essential part of plant biology.

I scrolled past the headline a couple times today because I thought it just meant self-pollinate.

What would be rare about that, though? Even the usual corn we see on the regular can self-pollinate. It typically doesn't, accepting pollen from its neighbours instead, but it can. It is suggested that in a typical field of corn, ~3% of the plants will end up being self-pollinated.

Nothing, but self-fertilization is already an established term in biology which makes it confusing.

True. As a corn grower, I assumed it meant nitrogen fixation on first read and didn't even consider your usage as fertilization, per your usage, isn't something we need to think about much in corn. Fertilize much more commonly refers to application of fertilizer in my world.

Context: Most plants pull nitrogen from the soil, and over time the soil becomes depleted and your crops grow more slowly. Bacteria in legumes convert atmospheric nitrogen to plant-usable forms, so historically you've needed to cycle nitrogen-"fixing" crops into your fields to 'restore' the nitrogen balance in the soil. Alternatively, you can use fertilizers, which supply N directly.

This is potentially interesting because the corn acts as its own fertilizer, fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere.

Per https://news.wisc.edu/corn-that-acquires-its-own-nitrogen-id..., original research paper was published in 2018, see https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

I just ordered seeds for a nitrogen fixing corn from the Experimental Farm Network.

Sold out. :-(

I'm also super interested. Is it this one? [0]

I have setup a monitor on this page using Monitoro [1] and it will send me an alert when the corn is not "sold out" anymore.

Disclaimer, I'm the founder of Monitoro, you can sign up here [2]. And feel free to reach out if you need any help.

[0]: https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/collections/grains...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=050Y6NSIu6I

[2]: https://monitoro.co

Someone is selling "nitrogen fixing maize corn" on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=nitrogen+fixing+corn

No idea if legit.

"Grown for centuries by indigenous farmers in rural Mexico, this incredibly rare corn can self-fertilise. In episode three of 'Planet Fix', we explore how this wonder crop could help tackle world hunger, and even end farming's toxic reliance on chemical fertilisers for good!"

What does self fertilization have to do with ending farming's toxic reliance on chemical fertilizers?

In this case "self fertilization" refers to fixing nitrogen, not "fertilizing" in the sense of reproduction.

Knowing exactly how much nitrogen they can fix is important. It's unlikely to be enough to take care of the nitrogen requirements of high yield corn.

In the video it said something about modulating the amount of nitrogen fixation based on the plant's needs. Could mean that it's able to scale it up if its needs are higher, but I imagine this is part of the breeding work they're doing.

What are the tradeoffs, does it taste as good and is the yield ok?

> taste as good

Is that important? The corn (not to be confused with sweet corn) we grow now doesn't taste good, hence why we largely don't eat it directly, using animals or chemical processes to make it palatable.

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