Chirality of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers ... harmful?

[izentrop]

Founded or not?

NitrogenArtificiel.gif (53.12 Kio) Accessed 2727 times

Extract from the book: "Green manures and soil fertility" by Joseph Pousset, Agronomist practicing natural agriculture. https://books.google.fr/books?id=rjZuHx ... ue&f=false

I have not found this supposition elsewhere, on the other hand we know that the living is homochiral, that is to say that for 2 molecules with identical characteristics of the same substance, it will accept only that oriented in a sense and not the other (from what I understood) Which enantiomer in biology?

Which would mean that if the molecule of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer was racemic, half was assimilated by plants and the rest leached?
All the more reason to switch to "phenoculture"

Other astonishing information in his book in chapter II "The natural sources of nitrogen are numerous ...", in particular the rain, but that is another subject.

[Did67]

I had never thought about it...

But first, the molecule must be chiral.

NO3- or NH4 + are they?

[mirror symmetrical or superimposed, too hard for me this morning, coffee has not yet acted! The notion is not familiar to me with the more complex organic molecules ...]

[izentrop]

Unfounded then ... I do not seek more, moreover it's less dangerous than it seems ...

Nitrates do not poison humans or the environment. Nitrates are not pollutants. Nitrates are essential nutrients for plant development.

Fighting nitrate to solve the problem of eutrophication is a solution that is practically impossible because it would make nitrogen more limiting than phosphorus in the vicinity of natural concentrations, those of a water of quality, ecologically dangerous because it stimulates cyanobacterial proliferation, technically inefficient due to the automatic reinjection by cyanobacteria of nitrogen that we try to eliminate and rationally questionable: does not we propose to track nitrate to fight against pollution by phosphates?
http://laurent.berthod.over-blog.fr/art ... 35333.html

[Did67]

Not so quickly: I asked the question? And I didn't look for the answer! The point is, I've always heard of enantiomers with slightly more complex organic molecules, for which it was pretty obvious that there were two "mirror" forms that don't overlap.

When we say that nitrates are not dangerous, we can discuss eutrophication.

In human health, there is hardly debate!

The Ministry of the Environment says this: http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.f ... f/05-6.pdf

This rather "soft" article does not say that there is no danger, but that they are often overestimated.

http://www.institut-environnement.fr/in ... 3&Itemid=2

[curious Institute elsewhere; I have not found who it is, but a priori, they publish on environmental problems, always on the theme: "move around, there is nothing to do", against the regulations, the European Commission; so much ardor makes them suspect to me: emanation with the high-sounding name of the chemical industry or that of fertilizers or ?????]

[izentrop]

A doc on chirality that completely surpasses me, I give up http://www.faidherbe.org/site/cours/dupuis/enantio.htm

http://www.institut-environnement.fr/in ... 3 & Itemid = 2
[curious Institute elsewhere; I have not found who it is, but a priori, they publish on environmental problems, always on the theme: "move around, there is nothing to do", against the regulations, the European Commission; so much ardor makes them suspect to me: emanation with the high-sounding name of the chemical industry or that of fertilizers or ?????]

An assassin article here http://terrefuture.blog.free.fr/index.p ... 8re-partie

... the eutrophication identified in many rural areas proves sufficiently that if phosphates are also involved, they are not those associated with the inhabitants of distant towns of 20 or 30 km and located downstream of the rivers concerned, but rather agricultural superphosphates widely spread everywhere ...

Not easy to know the truth.

[Swiss_Knight]

Simple mineral molecules, by simple geometric construction, can not be chiral.
It is valid from a certain level of complexity this notion.
Let's say at least 4 atoms of which 3 are different, to begin.

[Did67]

And valn!

It will have been learned that an Institute of the Environment can be an association 1901 close to the FNSEA.

And that an agronomist can write a book on the chirality of simple molecules that are not ...

I am not unhappy to be, sometimes, "like a sow in doubt"!

[izentrop]

Thank you swiss-knight for enlightenment.

Did, I wouldn't throw out "the baby with the bathwater".
J. Pousset's writing was conditional and the edition is from 2002. Maybe he corrected since ??

And he's an experimenter, like you. http://agriculture-de-conservation.com/ ... TCS-59.pdf, one of the pioneers of natural agriculture.
He also shares some interesting writings, accessible reading (at my level ) http://www.bio-normandie.org/?page_id=1282

It will have been learned that an Institute of the Environment can be an association 1901 close to the FNSEA.

Also, it dates from 2011 and the passionate author, lack of discernment.
I trust the publication of the Ministry of the Environment http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.f ... f/05-6.pdf

[Did67]

One can, in a life, accumulated the best and the worst. Montagnier, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, wrote, lately, strange things ...
Jean-Marie PELT, renowned biologist, in the years preceding his death, proposed a "mystical" vision of the biological which shocks me ...

There is indeed the conditional. But strangely enough it is used both for chirality (it "would exist"), and its effects, which however are facts (a levorotatory molecule deflects the plane of a light polarized towards the left, while the dextrorotatory form, of the same product , turns it to the right; there is no need for conditional) except for his "theory" according to which a part of the nitrates would not be assimilable ...

For example, there is L-glucose and D-glucose: http://uel.unisciel.fr/biologie/biochim ... 1_B11.html

The natural oses are almost all D (except for a few cases in bacteria).

[In reality, this gets a little more difficult because D and L are conventional, with respect to the first atom of C; there are therefore D oses which are levorotatory; and vice versa; but two enantiomers - two "same molecules of which one is D and the other L" always becomes (to deflect) light polarized in opposite directions and at the same angle!]

This question of chirality is very important to researchers working on the origin of life. They try to understand how in the initial soups, its appeared chiral molecules concentrations with domination of one of the forms. This is considered a prerequisite for the emergence of life.

Also note that if some families of natural molecules are all D, other families of molecules are L. Life is not all D, or all L ...

As always on earth, simple things get complicated in nature!

In short, it seems to me that its conditional, it would not be rather: "I do not understand well ... but I am calculating anyway" ???

[izentrop]

Also note that if some families of natural molecules are all D, other families of molecules are L. Life is not all D, or all L ...

... more precisely :

Amino acids in living things are therefore all left-handed, whereas DNA sugars are, on the contrary, right-handed. We then speak of homochirality of life. These two terms are inseparable: scientists indeed agree that homochirality is a fundamental signature of life, a necessary condition for its development. Without this "homochirality of life" (or even biomolecular asymmetry), life could not exist. http://www.savoirs.essonne.fr/thematiqu ... de-la-vie/