11 Jun UW innovations are helping farmers produce crops with less fertilizer. A pause in federal funds is threatening the research.
UW researchers are engineering beneficial bacteria that produce a process called nitrogen fixation in crops to improve their resilience. This photo, which shows a gel produced by a nitrogen-fixing corn’s aerial roots, is from a 2019 experiment at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station. Photo by Michael P. King/UW–Madison CALS
Most farmers use fertilizer on their crops to deliver proper nutrients that produce a healthy and profitable yield. Since synthetic fertilizers are typically derived from natural gas, farmers are at the mercy of the constantly fluctuating price of this finite resource.
Thanks to support from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation, researchers at University of Wisconsin–Madison are engineering beneficial bacteria and breeding more-resilient crops with the aim to minimize farmers’ reliance on synthetic fertilizers, increase their cost savings and help protect the environment.
Jean-Michel Ané, a professor of bacteriology, plant and agroecosystem sciences in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, uses field sites at the university’s Hancock and Arlington Agricultural Research Stations to run experiments and share new findings with growers across the state. His goal is to help them improve their efficiency without sacrificing yield.
We recently spoke with Ané about these projects and how halts to federal funding threaten the continuation of important agricultural research.