In 1988 two Brazilian scientists, Joanna Döbereiner and Vladimir Cavalcante, noticed something peculiar. Some fields of sugar cane were producing consistent yields without having received any fertilizer for decades. They searched inside the plant tissues and found a bacterium, Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, that was fixing nitrogen from the air. This ability is found in legumes such as peas and beans, thanks to a symbiosis between the plants and bacteria that live in special nodules on the roots.
