You’re right! It was a bad pun about agriculture and the soil bacteria that convert ammonia into “plant-available” nitrates. I hope the OP didn’t think the answer lay buried in the literature about this or nitrogen fixation.
I was recently surprised to learn, however, that:
“Despite application of luxurious amounts of N and use of refined best management practices, crops still acquire 40-80 percent of their N from endogenous soil reserves, and an average of 50 percent of the N applied is lost from agricultural landscapes. -p.137
The Rhizosphere: An Ecological Perspective Edited by Cardon & Whitbeck; Elsevier Science, Hardbound,
232 Pages; Published: MAR-2007; Imprint: ACADEMIC PRESS. LC Call #: QK644 .R445 2007
This “lost” nitrogen is a large source of GHG pollution, as well as creating “Dead Zones” (and future oil shales?) in our coastal waters and fisheries, so it’s an important topic.
And I was happy to see someone learning about the reactions that supply those still important “endongenous soil reserves,” supporting our food supplies, so I got carried away.
The mention of a 2x factor didn’t seem to be relevant either, so thanks for keeping the focus on useful results. A little color commentary can be nice, but it can be distracting too; so I’ll try to tone it down a bit moving forward. Thanks for the help.
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“Clearly, greater reliance on plant-mediated mineralization for nutrient acquisition in agroecosystems would reduce the potential for nutrient losses due to the tight coupling betwen the release of soluble, potentially mobile nutrient forms and plant uptake in the rhizosphere. This could be particularly advantageous in the case of N, which is highly susceptible to loss once it is converted to inorganic forms. Inorganic N pools can be extremely small while high rates of net primary productivity (NPP) are maintained if N-mineralization and plant assimilation are spatially and temporally connected in this manner.” -p.137
Wow, anyone could become rich by inventing something to connect those processes spatially and temporally, in that manner. Or they could use biochar, which does that naturally, and cuts nitrous oxide emission up to 50% ([2007] David Laird, USDA National Soil Tilthe Laboratory).
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Thanks again for making sure something more immediately helpful was conveyed.
Edited by Essay