Food & agriculture · around 2042

Nitrogen-fixing cereals

Projection

Wheat, maize or rice that feed themselves nitrogen from the air like beans do.

About half of humanity's food depends on Haber-Bosch fertiliser. Cereals that fix their own nitrogen would cut fertiliser cost, energy use and water pollution, especially for smallholder farmers.

Why it’s plausible: Maize landraces with nitrogen-fixing root mucilage and engineered microbial partners show partial success; transferring the full symbiosis is a hard multi-gene problem.

See it in the living treeWikipedia