After 30 years of rapidly expanding agriculture, South America is turning its focus from developing new fields to taking better care of those already in production. Victor Trucco remembers his father saying that soybeans would never be grown in their area. Yet Trucco became the first person to grow soybeans not long after he returned to the home farm in the mid-1960s.

BioNitrogen Corporation (PINKSHEETS: BION), a cleantech company that utilizes exclusive technology to build environmentally-friendly plants that convert agriculture and forestry biomass into urea fertilizer, announced today that the patent for its biomass-to-urea technology has been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patented technology will be used in BioNitrogen’s plants.

The Fertility Recommendation Spreadsheet has been updated to provide more functionality in developing fertility recommendations based on the tri-state fertilizer recommendation.

Corn is now in the seed filling growth stages (R2-R5) when nutrient demands are put on plant leaves as the seed kernels develop.

Plants in many fields have heavy ears, along with shallow roots because of abundant rainfall, and many of these plants could topple easily as they mature, especially if a late-season storm with high winds blows across the field.

Washington University biologists are undertaking an ambitious project to engineer tiny nitrogen-fixing devices within photosynthetic cells.