Contribution of N2 fixation for the world agriculture

Abstract

Plant production of high quality as well as the availability of foods rich in protein is crucially dependent on nitrogen. Tropical agricultural soils often have impaired production due to limited availability of nitrogen, which leads to use of nitrogen fertilizers and alternative resources such as biological nitrogen fixation (BNF). The latter has been used especially in grasses of economic importance, and this fact has initiated an important search in understanding these mechanisms in nonleguminous plants. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria such as rhizobia in turn aroused interest for research into new microbial sources such as nitrogen-fixing endophytic bacteria and not forming nodules. The mechanisms of BFN have grown exponentially and alternative sources to carry out the process increasingly investigated.