Scientists at Stanford University have come up with another reason to eat your beans, or at least to appreciate them: a study of mutant legumes has yielded an important clue that could help reduce global dependence on chemical fertilizers. As reported by Louis Bergeron for Stanford, that’s a green twofer: it could help reduce algae blooms caused by fertilizer, and it could reduce greenhouse gasses caused by fertilizer.
Sort of ironic, isn’t it? We’re used to thinking of legumes like beans as the cause of noxious gasses (for proof, check out that classic scene in Blazing Saddles), but on a global scale they could very well help provide a cure.