
Alfalfa Plants Vacuum Up Fertilizer Spill By Don Comis April 14, 1999U.S.
Department of Agriculture researchers grew alfalfa to clean up a spill of
45,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer resulting from a
Canadian Pacific Railway train derailment near
Bordulac, N. D., on Feb. 20, 1989. In the past three years, deep-rooted alfalfa specially bred to take in all
its nitrogen from soil and water removed excess nitrate from the soil and
significantly improved groundwater quality at the 7-acre spill site. Regular
alfalfa obtains most of its nitrogen from the air. Plant physiologist Carroll P. Vance with USDA's
Agricultural Research Service in St.
Paul, Minn., helped develop the "Ineffective Agate" alfalfa. Vance is
at the ARS Plant Science
Research Unit at St. Paul. Unlike regular alfalfa, Ineffective Agate cannot use nitrogen from the air.
But it takes up 30 to 40 percent more nitrogen from soil and water than regular
alfalfa. Vance, ARS soil scientist Michael P. Russelle and ARS
geneticist JoAnn F.S. Lambworked on the groundwater cleanup project with
North Dakota State
University's Carrington
Research and Extension Center and the environmental firm Braun Intertec
Corp. under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Canadian
Pacific Railway (CPR). Last year, the cleanup crew pumped out nearly 690,000 gallons of
high-nitrate groundwater and irrigated the alfalfa with it. They harvested the
alfalfa four times, removing 370 pounds of nitrogen per acre. As part of its agreement, ARS recently issued a final report on the research
part of the clean-up project to CPR and Braun
Intertec. ARS scientists are distributing small amounts of Ineffective Agate seed to
other researchers. Lamb has used this seed to incorporate the Ineffective Agate
trait into several lines of alfalfa adapted to various regions of the country. An article on the cleanup appears in the April issue of ARS' Agricultural Research magazine.
The story is also on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/apr99/alfa0499.htm Scientific contact: Carroll P. Vance, ARS Plant
Science Research Unit, St. Paul, Minn., phone (612) 625-5715, fax (651)
649-5058, [email protected]. Story contacts Plant Science Research Plant Science Research U.S. Department of Agriculture | |