Organically grown crops tend to have their nitrogen in complete proteins. Plants grown with large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer tend to have a certain content of free amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the plant sap which the plant-eating (juice sucking) insects find very convenient. It saves them considerable energy which they would otherwise have to use to chew leaves etc. and digest proteins.
Doug Woodard St. Catahrines, Ontario, Canada On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Keith Addison wrote: [snip] > Anyway, when chemists look at plants and/or soil and start talking > about nitrogen, beware!!! For a start, nitrogen may be a plant > nutrient, but it isn't a people nutrient. Do you know how they > measure protein content in crops? They don't, they measure the > nitrogen content instead and multiply by, by what, 6.14, IIRC, the > ratio of N in protein, and, hey, that's the protein content. Only it > turns out that the more N in the form of NPK chemical "fertiliser" > was used to grow the crop (or maybe just pump it up and paint it > green) the more likely it is that a lot of the alleged protein > content will be nitrates and nitrites and other semi-synthesised > stuff that's not only not exactly nutritious it can be downright > toxic. The N in your compost, however, is different: it doesn't > deplete the soil O/M, it doesn't wreck the soil pH, nor the soil > life, it doesn't make dead pools in the Gulf of Mexico or anything > like that, it just steadily becomes available to the roots as the > plants need it, and, along with all the other effects of your compost > - primarily biological effects - it helps the plants build real > protein. But the difference will not only not be apparent to said > chemist, he'll probably deny it exists, thus flying in the face of a > large amount of scientific evidence, and a vast amount of other > evidence. Of course there are chemists and chemists, just the same as > there are fertilisers and fertilisers. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
