But first he and colleagues in the department of soil science at the University of Nairobi in Kenya must show that the new isolates can foster different plants' growth by helping the plants use nitrogen. After that, they must culture large enough amounts of the microorganism for farmers to cheaply add the bacteria to different legume seeds and increase their yields. Farmlands in developing countries crave nutrients, but because farmers can neither afford the chemical fertilizers nor live with the pollution they create, they opt for biofertilizers like rhizobia.
Meanwhile, at microbiologist P. Atthasampunna's lab at the Thailand Institute of Scientific and Technological Research in Bangkok, re- searchers are using microorganisms in an environmentally sound way to process the massive waste generated by the cassava, an important crop whose roots are used to make food starch. The scientists recently built a pilot plant to ferment the waste into fuel ethanol; ...
