Community matters: A history of Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Nodulation research, 1965 to 1995

This historical analysis of a multi-disciplinary agricultural sciences field narrates a number of the key events shaping the history of Biological Nitrogen Fixation (BNF) and Nodulation research from 1965 to 1995 by exploring how the collective activities of promising and experimenting have contributed to the production of new knowledges, new forms of collaboration, new scientific tools and techniques, and new agricultural technologies and practices. BNF and Nodulation scientists study free-living nitrogen fixers and the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between legumes and Rhizobium (more commonly known as bean and tree legumes and specialized soil bacteria). Through a symbiotic process, Rhizobium "fix" nitrogen from the air and deliver it to legumes; thus legumes do not, as a rule, require additional application of nitrogen fertilizer. Reliance on BNF to meet the nitrogen needs of plants is an inexpensive alternative to the practice of adding chemically produced nitrogen fertilizer to agricultural production systems, both environmentally and economically. Thus, it is hoped that a better understanding of the genetic, biochemical, and ecological basis for the complex processes of BNF and Nodulation and a better understanding of free-living and symbiotic nitrogen fixing organisms will contribute to more sustainable agricultural practices. Further, the complex molecules and the biological processes of symbiotic interaction and nodulation are of interest in their own right and many nitrogen-fixing organisms have been developed as model organisms or model systems to explore these complex processes. For example, nodulation is used to study plant organ development as a developmental process. Symbiosis itself fascinates.; By the late 1960s, an alluring idea was circulating among science, policy and public actors who were concerned about nutrition, especially as related to inadequate production of protein in developing countries, and the environmental and economic problems associated with the increasing use of nitrogen fertilizer in agricultural production systems: Might it be possible to create a cereal crop, such as corn, wheat, or rice, that could fix nitrogen itself? When events converged between 1972 and 1975 in a way favoring an allocation of resources to alleviate one core concern---expensive fertilizer---a diverse range of actors from inside and outside the BNF community collectively enunciated a promise. Based on this promise---a promise that BNF and Nodulation research would lead to the creation of a nitrogen-fixing cereal in the near future---substantial economic resources were targeted to, and social resources became available for, BNF and Nodulation research generally, with a specific emphasis on BNF molecular genetics and plant molecular biology (of both legumes and cereals, as each were relevant). Thus, the promise contributed to the building of agricultural sciences infrastructures. The first two thematic chapters explore the emergence of this robust promise. However, a primary contribution of this dissertation is to move from a focus on whether a promise has been realized---"they came up with the goods"---to an expanded notion of beneficial effects---"they produced multiple goods." One principal finding is that the promise was appropriated to pursue differently focused, though often comparable, promises. This suggests that promises are the emergent effect of promising---promises proliferate. Several topical chapters analyze how these "new" promises re-focused resources to the pursuit of other social and scientific 'goods': the development of new institutions and infrastructures for plant-microbe interactions research, later-developing country agriculture, and plant molecular biology; knowledge-producing experimental systems as formulated by Hans-Jorg Rheinberger (1997) and extending this concept, a bio-ecological experimental system that intersticializes locally and globally situated organisms, subjects, and ecologies. Thus,...