Word Finder - nitrogenous

definition

Of, relating to, or containing nitrogen

In 1897 Buchner submitted yeast to great pressure, and isolated a nitrogenous substance, enzymic in character, which he termed "zymase."

Thus, then, alike for maintenance, for increase, and for the exercise of force, the exigencies of the system are characterized more by the demand for the digestible nonnitrogenous or more specially respiratory and fat-forming constituents than by that for the nitrogenous or more specially flesh-forming ones.

Similarly soils with less than i% of nitrogen are likely to be benefited by applications of nitrogenous manures.

Thus Nepenthes secures a supply of nitrogenous food from the animal world in a manner somewhat similar to that adopted by the British sundew, butterwort, and other insectivorous plants.

Of mineral constituents, whether used alone or in mixture with nitrogenous manures, phosphates are much more effective than mixtures of salts of potash, soda and magnesia.

But the average produce over forty years of continuous growth of barley was, in all cases where nitrogenous and mineral manures (containing phosphates) were used together, much higher than the average produce of the crop grown in ordinary rotation in the United Kingdom, and very much higher than the average in most other countries when so grown.

Accordingly it is more susceptible to exhaustion of surface soil as to its nitrogenous, and especially as to its mineral supplies; and in the common practice of agriculture it is found to be more benefited by direct mineral manures, especially phosphatic manures, than is wheat when sown under equal soil conditions.

The exhaustion of the soil induced by both barley and wheat is, however, characteristically that of available nitrogen; and when, under the ordinary conditions of manuring and cropping, artificial manure is still required, nitrogenous manures are, as a rule, necessary for both crops, and, for the spring-sown barley, superphosphate also.

Both the quantity and the quality of the produce, and consequently its feeding value, must depend greatly upon the selection of the best description of roots to be grown, and on the character and the amount of the manures, and especially on the amount of nitrogenous manure employed.

The fact that the growth of a leguminous crop, such as red clover, leaves the soil in a higher condition for the subsequent growth of a grain crop - that, indeed, the growth of such a leguminous crop is to a great extent equivalent to the application of a nitrogenous manure for the cereal crop - was in effect known ages ago.

The cereal crops (wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize); the cruciferous crops (turnips, cabbage, kale, rape, mustard); the solanaceous crops (potatoes); the chenopodiaceous crops (mangels, sugar-beets), and other non-leguminous crops have, so far as is known, no such power, and are therefore more or less benefited by the direct application of nitrogenous manures.

Of nitrogen, the cereal crops take up and retain much less than any of the crops alternated with them, notwithstanding the circumstance that the cereals are very characteristically benefited by nitrogenous manures.

As to the source of the nitrogen of the root-crops-the so-called " restorative crops "-these are as dependent as any crop that is grown on available nitrogen within the soil, which is generally supplied by the direct appli cation of nitrogenous manures, natural or artificial.

In the feeding experiments which have been carried on at Rothamsted it has been shown that the amount consumed both for a given live weight of animal within a given time, and for the production of a given amount of increase, is, as current food-stuffs go, measurable more by the amounts they contain of digestible and available non-nitrogenous constituents than by the amounts of the digestible and available nitrogenous constituents they supply.

Of the nitrogenous compounds in food, on the other hand, only a small proportion of the whole consumed is finally stored up in the increase of the animal - in other words, a very large amount of nitrogen passes through the body beyond that which is finally retained in the increase, and so remains for manure.

Hence it is that the amount of food consumed to produce a given amount of increase in live weight, as well as that required for the sustentation of a given live weight for a given time, should - provided the food be not abnormally deficient in nitrogenous substance - be characteristically dependent on its supplies of digestible and available non-nitrogenous constituents.

It has further been shown that, in the exercise of force by animals, there is a greatly increased expenditure of the non-nitrogenous constituents of food, but little, if any, of the nitrogenous.

Hence, as current fattening food-stuffs go - assuming, of course, that they are not abnormally low in the nitrogenous constituents - they are, as foods, more valuable in proportion to their richness in digestible and available nonnitrogenous than to that of their nitrogenous constituents.

Since these compounds are essential to plant life, it becomes necessary to replace the amount abstracted from the soil, and hence a demand for nitrogenous manures was created.

Water and carbonic acid are synthesized, under the action of sunlight, to form sugar, starch or some other carboh y drate and this is then combined with simple nitrogenous salts to form proteid.

In the same address he called attention to the conditions of the world's food supply, urging that with the low yield at present realized per acre the supply of wheat would within a comparatively short time cease to be equal to the demand caused by increasing population, and that since nitrogenous manures are essential for an increase in the yield, the hope of averting starvation, as regards those races for whom wheat is a staple food, depended on the ability of the chemist to find an artificial method for fixing the nitrogen of the air.

They have appeared independently in connexion with a change in the excretion of nitrogenous waste in Arachnids, Crustacea, and the other classes of Arthropoda when aerial, as opposed to aquatic, respiration has been established - and they have been formed in some cases from the mesenteron, in other cases from the proctodaeum.

Further, it is pointed out by Korschelt and Heider that the hinder portion of the gut frequently acts in Arthropoda as an organ of nitrogenous excretion in the absence of any special excretory tubules, and that the production of such caeca from its surface in separate lines of descent does not involve any elaborate or unlikely process of growth.

An important group of soil organisms are now known which have the power of using the free nitrogen of the atmosphere for the formation of the complex nitrogenous compounds of which their bodies are largely composed.

By their continued action the soil becomes enriched with nitrogenous material which eventually through the nitrification process becomes available to ordinary green crops.

This is due to the nitrogenous root residues left in the land.

Later the nitrogen-content of the nodule decreases, most of the organisms, which are largely composed of proteid material, becoming digested and transformed into soluble nitrogenous compounds which are conducted to the developing roots and seeds.

These nitrates generally occur as efflorescences caused by the oxidation of nitrogenous matter in the presence of the alkalies and alkaline earths.

The actual formation of this salt is not quite clear; but it is certainly conditioned by the simultaneous contact of decaying nitrogenous matter, alkalies, air and moisture.

The most obvious distinction is that the animal cell-wall is either absent or composed of a nitrogenous material, whereas the plant cell-wall is composed of a carbohydrate material - cellulose.

The rich colour of the grass is due to the fertilizing quality of the decaying fungi, which are peculiarly rich in nitrogenous substances.

Ammonia is carried back to the soil by means of rain, and there plays an important part in providing nitrogenous matter which is afterwards assimilated by vegetable life.

Owing, however, to its poverty in that form of nitrogenous compound called gluten, so abundant in wheat, barley-flour cannot be baked into vesiculated bread; still it is a highlynutritious substance, the salts it contains having a high proportion of phosphoric acid.

In this way the plant is supplied with nitrogenous food from the animal kingdom.

Calcium nitrate, Ca(N0,)2.4H20, is a highly deliquescent salt, crystallizing in monoclinic prisms, and occurring in various natural waters, as an efflorescence in limestone caverns, and in the neighbourhood of decaying nitrogenous organic matter.

Ammonia is found in small quantities as the carbonate in the atmosphere, being produced from the putrefaction of nitrogenous animal and vegetable matter; ammonium salts are also found in small quantities in rain-water, whilst ammonium chloride (sal-ammoniac) and ammonium sulphate are found in volcanic districts; and crystals of ammonium bicarbonate have been found in Patagonian guano.

The commercial salt is known as salvolatile or salt of hartshorn and was formerly obtained by the dry distillation of nitrogenous organic matter such as hair, horn, decomposed urine, &c., but is now obtained by heating a mixture of sal-ammoniac, or ammonium sulphate and chalk, to redness in iron retorts, the vapours being condensed in leaden receivers.

The casein, which forms the principal constituent of cheese, and a certain proportion of albumen which is present, form the nitrogenous, while the complex saline substances and water are the mineral constituents.

When heated with nitrogenous substances, in the presence of carbonated or caustic alkali, it forms cyanides.

The older processes for the commercial preparation of this salt, which were based on the ignition of nitrogenous substances with an alkaline carbonate and carbon, have almost all been abandoned, since it is more profitable to prepare the salt from the byproducts obtained in the manufacture of illuminating gas.

They contain, in loo parts without husks, nitrogenous substances 22.7, fat 3.76, starch 63.18, mineral matters 2.6 parts, with water (Forbes Watson, quoted in Parkes's Hygiene).

On cutting across a grain of rice and examining it under the microscope, first the flattened and dried cells of the husk are seen, and then one or two layers of cells elongated in a direction parallel to the length of the seed, which contain the gluten or nitrogenous matter.

Rice is not so valuable as a food as some other cereals, inasmuch as the proportion of nitrogenous matter (gluten) is less.

Rice, therefore, is chiefly a farinaceous food, and requires to be combined with fatty and nitrogenous substances, such as milk or meat gravy, to satisfy the requirements of the system.

It is formed when a stream of electric sparks is passed through moist air, and in the oxidation ',of nitrogenous matter in the presence of water.

The enclosed alga is protected by the threads (hyphae) of the fungus, and supplied with water and salts and, possibly, organic nitrogenous substances; in its turn the alga by means of its green or blue-green colouring matter and the sun's energy manufactures carbohydrates which are used in part by the fungus.

The most commonly used nitrogenous manures are nitrate of soda, nitrate of potash and sulphate of ammonia, the prices of which are constantly fluctuating.

Klebs has shown that the development of zoosporangia or of oogonia and pollinodia respectively in Saprolegnia is dependent on the external conditions; so long as a continued stream of suitable food-material is ensured the mycelium grows on without forming reproductive organs, but directly the supplies of nitrogenous and carbonaceous food fall below a certain degree of concentration sporangia are developed.

Like these they require water, small but indispensable quantities of salts of potassium, magnesium, sulphur and phosphorus, and supplies of carbonaceous and nitrogenous materials in different stages of complexity in the different cases.

The water taken up by the root from the soil contains nitrogenous and mineral salts which combine with the first product of photo-synthesis - a carbohydrate - to form more complicated nitrogen-containing food substances of a proteid nature; these are then distributed by other elements of the vascular bundles (the phloem) through the leaf to the stem and so throughout the plant to wherever growth or development is going on.