Talk:Nitrogen fixation

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Untitled

Nitrogen can also be artificially fixed for use in fertilizer, explosives, or in other products. The most popular method is by the Haber process. This artificial fertilizer production has achieved such scale that it is now the largest source of fixed nitrogen in the Earth's ecosystem.

I can't find a source for this claim, and it seems doubtful. Jfbolus (talk) 02:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I know for a fact that this is the case - I will try and find a citation - it should be pretty easy. Smartse (talk) 12:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for pointing that out. Smartse (talk) 12:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Nitrate fixation

It seems pretty obvious that the Nitrate fixation page-let is actually about N₂ ie. nitrogen and not about 'NO₃ fixation.' I suggest the 'Nitrate fixation' page be deleted. Satyrium 15:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

This article would be much more useful to non-biologists if the list of nitrogen-fixing plants included the common names of those plants.

Stewart king (talk) 21:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

This article would be more useful if it mention what is the goal of doing nitrogen fixation... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.234.203 (talk) 09:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

There is a lot of unnecessarily complicated language in this article, aside from linked terminology or special jargon. It could be greatly simplified. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurfsahoy (talk • contribs) 22:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Nitrogen fixing Archaebacteria

From what I could see, references 2 and 3 in the Wiki article do not speak about nitrogen fixation in Archaea. N₂ fixation by mesophilic Archaea is until now only speculation. It is known, however, that some thermophilic archaeon can fix atmospheric N₂ reference 1 and reference 2 and reference 3 and reference 4. The mechanism of N₂ fixation was found to be essentially similar to what is found in bacteria reference 5 reference 6

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Riennn (talk • contribs) 12:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Combustion

N fixation by combustion is mentioned in the introduction but not in the article. Smartse (talk) 12:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Rubus

I've read elsewhere that a few Rubus species can do this too, e.g., Rubus ellipticus. Horatio (talk) 09:04, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Definition issue

First sentence: "Nitrogen fixation is a process, biological, abiotic, or synthetic by which nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere is converted into ammonia (NH3)." Later in the lead: "Nitrogen fixation also refers to other biological conversions of nitrogen, such as its conversion to nitrogen dioxide."

But this would exclude things like lightning creating NO2 (that's not a "biological" conversion), which IS called 'nitrogen fixation'. Really the term seems to be applied for anything that converts atmospheric N2 to nitrogen compounds (I've seen it applied to NOx production in general), though the specific biological def. is probably the more common context.

I think the first sentence should read: "Nitrogen fixation is a process, biological, abiotic, or synthetic, by which nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere is converted into nitrogen compounds such as ammonia (NH3)." This would make the "also refers to" unnecessary while still mentioning ammonia. Vultur (talk) 22:40, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I concur weith the above, and add another thing

By saying N2 fixation is only a term used for ammonia, and then saying that "Lightning does it too", it's understood that lightning creates ammonia. At least, I understood it, for the past year.

The source "3", next to lightning, uses nitrogen fixation as a term to talk about N going to NO3, so there, it should be changed I think.

I don't know the protocol for changing text, maybe someone with time... puts a draft here?

Orangutan45 (talk) 21:38, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

BNF vandalised?

About a month ago a guest user changed the BNF reaction to read N₂ + 3 O₂ → 2 NO₃ ... That isn't how you make ammonia so I have reverted it with a note of possible vandalism.

My limited knowledge of chemistry says that reaction wouldn't work anyway, at least not without some missing components being added. A lot of energy or a catalyst, plus charge notation on the radical output? That's beside the point though.

Nazzy (talk) 16:11, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Nitrogen fixation/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Cleanup rough content structure, especially in biological nitrogen fixation section. Discussion of history of understanding, first fixation on geologic timescale. Quantify contribution to nitrogen cycle, energy requirement for chemical fixation, energy source for biological fixation. -- Paleorthid 05:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Last edited at 19:21, 21 November 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 01:20, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Needs more chemical equations

from N2 to NO3 to NO4+ to NO3-

73.150.193.141 (talk) 13:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC) Norm

Genes

There is some research going on towards the genes that are responsible for SNF in legumes. This might be useful for genetic modification of non-legumes, ie to give them the SNF ability. See this link. Perhaps mention in this article ? Genetics4good (talk) 09:44, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

I Think that the Endosymbiosis in diatoms section should be expanded on or taken out. Its too short to have its own section. The Non-leguminous section needs to be organized in a way that matches the rest of the paper. It does not flow as your reading the article and is a section that stands out. The None-Biological natural fixation can be moved or taken out. Its way to short to be the first topic in the article and is short enough that it could just be a quick mention in another section of the paper. The history of the discovery and science of Biological Nitrogen fixation should be its own section. On a good note though, the images are very functional and are on topic. The introduction was very good. It was short ,but established all the key points. The quality of evidence was good, but some of the shorter topics had no citations. Things that were cited were cited correctly. Kytcheyn (talk) 13:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

My edits

I expanded the Non-biological natural nitrogen fixation. I added citations to that section. I added a image of lightning. I made a couple of edits to the biological nitrogen fixation section Kytcheyn (talk) 13:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Kytcheyn: Thanks for that. I have copy edited it to make it more concise and scientific, removing a few unneccesary parts [1]. While I don't disagree, we should leave it to our readers to decide whether it is fascinating or not. SmartSE (talk) 13:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Somebody please fix reference 12 -- I can't edit the reference page

The correct reference is to chapter 7, not chapter 6. Replace 10.1007/978-94-017-9269-1_6 with 10.1007/978-94-017-9269-1_7 108.52.207.45 (talk) 02:15, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done--Smokefoot (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Incomplete list of non-leguminous species

In the table of non-leguminous families/genera I added the list of species since not all species fix nitrogen. I went through the Wikipedia articles of the species of some of the genera to find out whether they fix nitrogen or not. If the corresponding article said yes, I added the species to the list. The table is still incomplete and any contributions are welcome. Morgoonki (talk) 22:03, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Information in the French version missing here

There is substantial additional information in the French page https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_biologique_du_diazote which is missing in the English one, e.g. reference to a variety of maize which can fix atmospheric nitrogen. I lack the specialist knowledge to effect a translation. MarkMLl (talk) 09:11, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Nitrogen fixation in cereals

Would a discussion of the goal and progress towards producing genetically modified cereal crops (rice, wheat, etc.) that can fix nitrogen belong on this page? It is discussed as an important step towards fighting food security and climate change in several secondary sources ex: [2]https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/growing-rice-with-less-fertilizer [3]https://news.mit.edu/2020/making-real-biotechnology-dream-nitrogen-fixing-cereal-crops-0110 Asking for feedback as I have not made a significant edit to a wikipedia article yet. ConstantQuery (talk) 18:31, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

@ConstantQuery: Hi - yes I think something could definitely be added about that. However per our guidance on sourcing scientific articles it would be better to cite review articles published in journals rather than press releases such as those. These are a bit outdated, but might be useful: [4] [5] this is more recent and free to read: [6]. SmartSE (talk) 20:01, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Plant Ecology Winter 2023

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Nitrogen fixation

Assignment 102.22.232.106 (talk) 18:57, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

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