Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The nodule organism of the Leguminosae

1900; Linnean Society of New South Wales; Volume: 24; Linguagem: Inglês

10.5962/bhl.part.7689

0370-047X

R Greig-Smith,

Plant responses to water stress

It has been for a long time known to agriculturists that a leguminous crop enriches the soil to a considerable extent, and it is customary to sow a crop of beans, clover, or other leguminous plant as a preparation for wheat, which makes a great demand upon the soil nitrogen.It was the general feeling that the Leguminosie could gain nitrogen from the air, but how this occurred was not understood.In the middle of the century Boussingault, Villes, Lawes, Gilbert and Pugh studied the question, and although Villes certainly showed a gain of nitrogen in some of his plant experir ments, yet the later investigations of the Rothamsted experimenters showed that neither the Leguminosa?nor any other plant could utilise the nitrogen from any source other than the soil.THE NODULE ORGANISM OF THE LEGUMINOS^, gain of nitrogen, while with the survival over this sick period the nodules appeared, and there was a considerable gain of nitrogen.From this the inference was naturally drawn that leguminous plants could gain their nitrogenous food by absorbing the atmospheric nitrogen in some way, and that this action had an intimate relation with the nodules formed upon the i-oots.In other words, the nodules were capal^le of elaborating gaseous nitrogen into nitrogenous forms capable of being assimilated by the plant.Hellriegal and Wilfarth in this way indirectly proved the fixation of nitrogen by showing that the matui'e plant contained more nitrogen than was originally in the soil.