Fixing the soil
Run time: 12.00 – 13.00
The secret to a strong crop is having plenty of nitrogen content in your soil. However, growing plants intensively in one place can quickly use up these stocks. In most cases, farmers will put these back in the soil artificially using fertilisers, but they have wide impacts on our environment.
Legumes are a plant that can naturally replenish these reserves. They have evolved a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria known as rhizobia, which means they have no need for fertilisers.
Along with a team of researchers at the Crop Science Centre, University of Cambridge, Giles Oldroyd is developing transformative technologies that can replicate this natural process in cereal crops, giving us the potential to sustainably increase global food production.
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