Peas, lentils, chickpeas, beans and peanuts: if it comes in a pod then chances are it’s a legume. These unassuming food crops have a special ability that makes them fairly unique in the plant kingdom.

Plants need nitrogen to grow. Many legumes meet this need through a symbiotic relationship: They harbor bacteria that fix ...

The processes that govern the formation of symbiotic structures between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and legumes in the latter's roots remain largely a mystery to science, but researchers have recently ...

Researchers demonstrate that the plant hormone gibberellin (GA) is essential for the formation and maturation of nitrogen-fixing root nodules in legumes and can also increase nodule size. Researchers ...

Legumes are able to grow in nitrogen-poor soils due to their ability to engage in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. There is a great interest in using the knowledge about this symbiosis, to ...

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If crops could feel envy, it’d be for legumes. Bean plants have a superpower. Or more ...

Biological nitrogen-fixing is a process of great agricultural and ecological interest, given that nitrogen, after water and carbon, is the nutrient that most limits vegetable growth and crop ...

Six of our nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed—and industrial agriculture are the main culprit. That is what a team of scientists under Johan Rockström reported in an article published in ...

If crops could feel envy, it’d be for legumes. Bean plants have a superpower. Or more accurately, they share one. They’ve developed symbiotic relationships with bacteria that process atmospheric ...