Science highlights nitrogen fixing cereals as one major challenge in plant biotechnology

On September 16th, Science launched a Special Issue about Plant Translational Biology. One of the articles highlights the challenges and opportunities lying ahead for genetically engineering crops to fix nitrogen directly from the air. As of now, farmers have to laboriously supply nitrogen to crops by applying fertilizer, which pollutes the environment and is very expensive, dooming small poor farmers in the developing world to very low yields and hunger.

The article prominently features the work done by Prof. Luis Rubio, from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid at the Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, which supports research in Translational Biology since its foundation, having it as one of its strategic aims. Prof. Rubio's lab has been working on the direct transfer of nitrogen fixation genes from bacteria to plants with the funding of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2011.

For more info, you can check the original article: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6305/1225