Question: What is rhizobium?

Jo Hulsmans answered on 15 Jun 2011:

Good question and something I should explain better in my profile!

Rhizobium is a very special bacteria. It lives in the soil, but it can move into little nodes on the roots of some plants (beans would be an example) where it can capture nitrogen from the air. Plants can not do this, they usually get their nitrogen from the soil, and when there is no more nitrogen in the soil they can’t grow properly. This is why we need fertiliser in agriculture, so we can give the plants extra nitrogen. Rhizobium bacteria know how to get nitrogen from the air (air is about 60% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and 20% other stuff) and then give it to the plants.

Unfortunately not all plants have the ability to let rhizobium do the work for them and we want to find out why that is and if we are successful we want to try to give that ability to other plants!

Hope that helps, keep up the interesting questions