Claudine Elmerich & Adam Kondorosi 
Biological Nitrogen Fixation for the 21st Century 
Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Nitrogen Fixation, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, July 20-25 1997

Nitrogen availability is one of the most critical factors that limits plant productivity. The largest reservoir of nitrogen is the atmosphere, but this gaseous molecular nitrogen only becomes available to plants through the biological nitrogen fixation process, which only prokaryotic cells have developed. The discovery that microbes were providing fixed nitrogen to legumes and the isolation of the first nitrogen-fixing bacteria occured at the end the 19th Century, in Louis Pasteur’s time. We are now building on more than 100 years of research in this field and looking towards the 21st Century. The International Nitrogen Fixation Congress series Started more than 20 years ago. The format of this Congress is designed to gather scientists from very diverse origins, backgrounds, interests and scientific approaches and is a forum where fundamental knowledge is discussed alongside applied research. This confluence of perspectives is, we believe, extremely beneficial in raising new ideas, questions and concepts.