This Aquatic Fern Replaces Nitrogen Fertilizer Completely. China Used It for 1,000 Years. скачать в хорошем качестве

This Aquatic Fern Replaces Nitrogen Fertilizer Completely. China Used It for 1,000 Years.

Azolla is a tiny aquatic fern that fixes nitrogen directly from the atmosphere through a symbiotic cyanobacterium fused into its biology over millions of years of co-evolution. Chinese rice farmers used it as a biofertilizer for over 1,500 years, with the earliest written record dating to 544 CE. By 1962, China cultivated Azolla on 1.5 million hectares, while Vietnam expanded its use to 500,000 hectares by 1973. This living system performs the same chemical conversion as the Haber-Bosch process, turning atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available ammonia, but requires only sunlight, water, and air instead of fossil fuels, extreme heat, and industrial infrastructure. Azolla fixes roughly one tonne of nitrogen per acre per year while simultaneously drawing down six tonnes of carbon. Forty-nine million years ago, an Arctic Azolla bloom lasting 800,000 years reduced atmospheric CO2 by eighty percent, helping shift Earth into its current climate state. Beyond fertilizer, Azolla doubles its biomass every two days, contains 25-30% protein by dry weight, serves as livestock feed, remediates heavy metals from water, and suppresses mosquito larvae. While limitations exist around cold tolerance, salinity, and invasiveness, Azolla represents a proven, carbon-negative alternative to synthetic fertilizer that has already sustained civilizations for over a millennium. 📚 Sources: Brinkhuis H, Schouten S, Collinson ME, Sluijs A, Sinninghe Damste JS, Dickens GR, Huber M, Cronin TM, Onodera J, Takahashi K, Bujak JP, Stein R, van der Burgh J, Eldrett JS, Harding IC, Lotter AF, Sangiorgi F, van Konijnenburg-van Cittert H, de Leeuw JW, Matthiessen J, Backman J, Moran K, Episodic fresh surface waters in the Eocene Arctic Ocean, Nature, 2006 Speelman EN, Van Kempen MML, Barke J, Brinkhuis H, Reichart GJ, Smolders AJP, Roelofs JGM, Sangiorgi F, De Leeuw JW, Lotter AF, Sinninghe Damste JS, The Eocene Arctic Azolla bloom: environmental conditions productivity and carbon drawdown, Geobiology, 2009 Pearson PN, Palmer MR, Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 60 million years, Nature, 2000 Li FW, Brouwer P, Carretero-Paulet L, Cheng S, de Vries J, Delaux PM, Eily A, Koppers N, Kuo LY, Fern genomes elucidate land plant evolution and cyanobacterial symbioses, Nature Plants, 2018 Ran L, Larsson J, Vigil-Stenman T, Nylander JA, Ininbergs K, Zheng WW, Lapidus A, Lowry S, Haselkorn R, Bergman B, Genome erosion in a nitrogen-fixing vertically transmitted endosymbiotic multicellular cyanobacterium, PLOS ONE, 2010 Wagner GM, Azolla: a review of its biology and utilization, Botanical Review, 1997 Moore AW, Azolla: biology and agronomic significance, Botanical Review, 1969 Watanabe I, Berja NS, The growth of four species of Azolla as affected by temperature, Aquatic Botany, 1983 Lumpkin TA, Plucknett DL, Azolla: botany physiology and use as a green manure, Economic Botany, 1980 Bujak JP, Azolla as a safe food: suppression of cyanotoxin-related genes and cyanotoxin production in its symbiont Nostoc azollae, Plants, 2024 Cohen MF, Meziane T, Tsuchiya M, Yamasaki H, Feeding deterrence of Azolla in relation to deoxyanthocyanin and fatty acid composition, Aquatic Botany, 2002 Waddell LM, Moore TC, Salinity of the Eocene Arctic Ocean from oxygen isotope analysis of fish bone carbonate, Paleoceanography, 2008