The woman who turbo charged sugar cane and got ethnaol boosted up. "she learned that only leguminous plants are able to enter a symbiosis with bacteria capable of atmospheric nitrogen fixation, it called her attention, that in Brazil, planting sugar cane as a monoculture without nitrogen fertilization did not cause a decline in productivity.
In the fifties she discovered a new diazotrophic bacteria, that she denominated Beijerinckia fluminensis that associates with the roots of sugar cane. Since then, her research was focused on nitrogen fixation in gramineous plants and she described together with her collaborators and students, seven new diazotrophic bacteria doubling the number of bacteria of this type known. In the last years, Johanna and her group discovered completely different associations of these and the grasses which explain much better the high levels of atmospheric nitrogen that sugar cane and other gramineous plants obtain. Four of these bacteria were shown to be obligatory endophytic and colonize roots, stems and leaves of sugar cane and other cereals without causing pathogenic symptoms, representing a symbiosis almost as perfect as the one presented by leguminous plants. As a reward for this research, Johanna received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of UFRRJ and of the University of Florida. She was elected member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in 1977 of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences and is "Founding Member" of the Third World Academy in 1981. She received ten scientific awards and was admitted to the National Order of Scientific Merit, in the class Great-Cross in 1994.
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