# L-glutamine as nitrogen source



## papheteer (Oct 1, 2013)

I have a whole bottle of l-glutamine supplement powder lying around the house and I'd like to know if it could be used as a fertilizer. I have read some people use amino acids. I think what I have is 100% pure l-glutamine. Thanks!


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## NYEric (Oct 1, 2013)

Muscle-head plants!


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## TyroneGenade (Oct 1, 2013)

Check if its an L-glutamine salt (i.e. mono-sodium glutamine) else you could be adding lots of sodium.

Glutamine is an intermediary metabolite (building block) used in the citric acid cycle (the Krebs cycle of yesteryear) and elsewhere. Any living organism will LOVE it. This includes bacteria and fungi. Dilute feeding with the amino acid may be good as it is a nitrogen source (glutamine is used to add an ammonia group to other intermediary metabolites to make amino acids).

bye


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## Dido (Oct 2, 2013)

I would try it over spraying

I have good experience with amino acids despite the smell I have to say. 

I use methionin as it brigns in S and I use Lysin and B vitamin. 

Sometimes I use a hydrolised plant protein as it has over 30 different one, but the smell is terrible. 
Oh well my plants like it, and I think it is a more natural source then many other things, they cannot find in nature


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## TyroneGenade (Oct 2, 2013)

If you want to provide amino acids without the smell then fertilize with hair. If you have dog then this is easy, otherwise try sheep wool. The wool/hair is just keratin which slowly breaks down to release amino acids. No smell.


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## papheteer (Oct 2, 2013)

TyroneGenade said:


> Check if its an L-glutamine salt (i.e. mono-sodium glutamine) else you could be adding lots of sodium.
> 
> Glutamine is an intermediary metabolite (building block) used in the citric acid cycle (the Krebs cycle of yesteryear) and elsewhere. Any living organism will LOVE it. This includes bacteria and fungi. Dilute feeding with the amino acid may be good as it is a nitrogen source (glutamine is used to add an ammonia group to other intermediary metabolites to make amino acids).
> 
> bye



Thank Tyrone! It says in the label: 100% Pure Japanese Micronized L-glutamine (free form).


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## Trithor (Oct 2, 2013)

Spray with dog!!!? 
NO ONE COMES NEAR MY DOGS!:viking:


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## Ray (Oct 2, 2013)

Dido said:


> I use methionin as it brigns in S and I use Lysin and B vitamin.


Methionine is an interesting chemical.

Made from H2S, one of the more toxic industrial chemicals out there and methyl isocyanate (ditto - that's the stuff of Bhopal India infamy), for years it was added to chicken feed, as it causes the birds to put on protein very rapidly.

Those 4-5# "oven stuffer roasters" were only 6 weeks old!


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## ALToronto (Oct 2, 2013)

Ray said:


> Methionine is an interesting chemical.
> 
> Made from H2S, one of the more toxic industrial chemicals out there and methyl isocyanate (ditto - that's the stuff of Bhopal India infamy), for years it was added to chicken feed, as it causes the birds to put on protein very rapidly.
> 
> Those 4-5# "oven stuffer roasters" were only 6 weeks old!



So is methionine an amino acid or a hormone? And does it occur naturally?

H2S may be toxic, but our own bodies produce it (in what may sometimes seem like toxic concentration, but as long as you can smell it, it's harmless). Is methyl isocyanate also a naturally occurring substance?


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## Ray (Oct 3, 2013)

ALToronto said:


> So is methionine an amino acid or a hormone? And does it occur naturally?
> 
> H2S may be toxic, but our own bodies produce it (in what may sometimes seem like toxic concentration, but as long as you can smell it, it's harmless). Is methyl isocyanate also a naturally occurring substance?



My understanding is that methionine is an amino acid, but higher levels in the body do shift the metabolism toward protein assimilation.

I have only worked in chemical plants producing pure, highly-concentrated H2S, no the fact that it is naturally produce is irrelevant. As far as I know methyl isocyanate is not naturally occurring.


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## Dido (Oct 3, 2013)

Without mehtionine our bodys would not work, the same for mainly all other animals it is esential for all of us. 
It is added to the feed to make it a balanced feed and to reduce the output of nitrogen in to the ground. 
Lysin and methionin are the first limiting Amino Acids if you fee poultry and swine.


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## papheteer (Oct 6, 2013)

To those that answered my question about L-GLUTAMINE, THANK YOU!! oke:


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## Ray (Oct 6, 2013)

I don't know how big of a role they play in its effectiveness, but I got an analysis of KelpMax that shows it's loaded with all sorts of stuff, including methionine and glutamic acid.

Units are ppm.


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## Rick (Oct 6, 2013)

Ray

I'm glad you posted the breakdown of Kelpmax. Everyone gets so excited about the hormones, but they are the tip of the iceberg for what is in kelp products.

I have seen one paper on N utilization in orchids that indicated that glutamine was the most significant source of Nitrogen for the plant. But the model species was a Catasetum at root pH of 4.0 and lower. Other papers have not demonstrated the same level of direct induction of glutamine.

From skimming the web I found that someone in Norway or Sweden ((??) was trying to patent a glutamine based plant fertilizer, so someone else thinks its a good idea.

Plants use nitrogen to make amino acids. So the supposition is that "why waste time inducting inorganic sources of N, when you can uptake the metabolites directly?" It saves multiple steps, energy, and resources to uptake the final product rather than starting from basic building blocks from scratch.


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## Trithor (Oct 6, 2013)

I think the question is, how stable is glutamine as a plant fertilizer? The reality is, how much of the applied glutamine is available as glutamine to the plant once it has made contact with the potting medium and its host of bacterial and fungal flora?


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## Ray (Oct 6, 2013)

If you buy the fact that nutrients tend to be trapped pretty much instantly upon contact with the roots, I would think it's a case of "what they see is what they get"....


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## TyroneGenade (Oct 6, 2013)

Ray said:


> My understanding is that methionine is an amino acid, but higher levels in the body do shift the metabolism toward protein assimilation.



Methionine is the most important amino acid. For bacteria and eukaryotes (like you, me and our orchids) it is the first amino acid incorporated into any protein. As the DNA as transcribed to RNA and the RNA translated to protein, the first amino acid to be read off the RNA is methionine. If there isn't' enough methionine the the protein simply isn't made. 

Animals respond to this by increasing the recycling of old proteins to obtain the methionine from those proteins. In aging experiments, if you restrict methionine then growth slows but recycling increases and some how (we are not sure just how) this translates into longer life. (There are various competing theories for how this works.)

Normally, in protein translation the first few amino acids form a signal sequence that instructs the cell where the protein has to go and has to be processed to perform its function. When its processing and delivery is complete this signal sequence is cleaved off and sent for recycling so the cell can reuse the methionine.

So, if you are short of methionine then protein synthesis is impaired and you don't grow properly (i.e. chickens and pigs don't grow fast enough for economical slaughter). Methionine, lysine and many others are essential amino acids for human beings and other mammals (different animals have different essential amino acids). Plants, if I recall correctly, can synthesize their own methionine, lysine etc... and their growth isn't limited by these amino acids BUT they need ammonia to make amino acids and using raw ammonia is far more expensive (with respect to the fuel used to drive the conversion process) than simply exchanging an ammonia group with glatamine to make glutamate and another amino acid.


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## Rick (Oct 6, 2013)

Trithor said:


> I think the question is, how stable is glutamine as a plant fertilizer? The reality is, how much of the applied glutamine is available as glutamine to the plant once it has made contact with the potting medium and its host of bacterial and fungal flora?



The exact same arguments could be said about ammonia.

A couple hundred mg of your basic nitrifying bacteria can covert it to nitrate in just a few minutes in your potting mix. Some bacteria and fungi might just want the amino acids for the carbon. A bunch will be competing with the orchid to utilize it straight up just like the plants.


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## papheteer (Oct 6, 2013)

Now we're talking!


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## papheteer (Oct 6, 2013)

Ray said:


> I don't know how big of a role they play in its effectiveness, but I got an analysis of KelpMax that shows it's loaded with all sorts of stuff, including methionine and glutamic acid.
> 
> Units are ppm.



Thanks for that Ray! Been meaning to ask you the NPK in kelpmax as I'm still trying to go low K.

Kelpmax is a great product! My plants have responded well to it. And it doesn't smell bad at all!


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## papheteer (Oct 6, 2013)

Rick said:


> Ray
> 
> I'm glad you posted the breakdown of Kelpmax. Everyone gets so excited about the hormones, but they are the tip of the iceberg for what is in kelp products.
> 
> ...



Thanks. I guess i just have to give it a try and let you guys know what happens!


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## Rick (Oct 6, 2013)

papheteer said:


> Thanks. I guess i just have to give it a try and let you guys know what happens!



Yup

I'm not sure I'd expect anything different from using Kelp, but can't learn if you don't try anything new.


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## myxodex (Oct 7, 2013)

I have also been thinking about using aa's in fert, partly as chelating agents for metal cations. Did some reading. Some aa's if used alone can cause partial inhibition of growth relative to NH4+ as N source, due to feedback regulation disturbing the levels of others. I'm thinking of using aspartic acid, glutamic acid and histidine as complexing agents as these two acidic aa's form much higher stability metal cation-aa complexes together with histidine than any aa alone. Another reason for choosing these two is that some plants release these two aa's into the rhizosphere (along with acids such as citrate, malate etc.) as a way of releasing metal ions bound to insoluble organics (or at least that was the suggestion). Histidine is used to transport metal cations in the xylem and some hyperaccumulators (not suggesting that any orchids are) consistutively have high histidine pools (btw histidine is a good chelator).

Another interesting thing was the cross talk between sulphate assimilation and nitrogen metabolism. Apparently when cysteine levels drop due to sulphate deficiency, it's precusor O-acetylserine (OAS) accumulates, and this acts as a signal to turn off the genes for nitrate reduction and turn on a gene for a high affinity sulphate transporter. In fact depending on relative levels of nitrogen, a sulphur deficiency can present as an Mo deficiency with accumulation of cellular NO3-.


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## Rick (Oct 7, 2013)

myxodex said:


> Another interesting thing was the cross talk between sulphate assimilation and nitrogen metabolism. Apparently when cysteine levels drop due to sulphate deficiency, it's precusor O-acetylserine (OAS) accumulates, and this acts as a signal to turn off the genes for nitrate reduction and turn on a gene for a high affinity sulphate transporter. In fact depending on relative levels of nitrogen, a sulphur deficiency can present as an Mo deficiency with accumulation of cellular NO3-.



This sounds like it would also tend to look like nitrogen deficiency in the presence of plenty of nitrogen.


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## naoki (Oct 7, 2013)

Thank you for the info myxodex. I don't understand the chelation part, but the gene regulation part kind of makes sense. If protein synthesis is limited (due to deficiency of S) in a single cell, it is probably better to leave N in NO3 than in NH4. NO3 is easier to transport than NH4 between cells (and tissues), right? Or maybe this is a wrong track of thinking the reason why S deficiency down-regulate nitrate reduction??


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## NYEric (Oct 8, 2013)

NYEric said:


> Muscle-head plants!





papheteer said:


> To those that answered my question about L-GLUTAMINE, THANK YOU!! oke:



Of course everyone else (Not me!) is too polite to ask how come you have a jar of the stuff lying around unused! :evil:


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## papheteer (Oct 8, 2013)

Hehehehe, it's supposed to help for muscle recovery after training and volleyball. Lol!


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## NYEric (Oct 8, 2013)

Hope that went well.


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## Rick (Oct 8, 2013)

naoki said:


> Thank you for the info myxodex. I don't understand the chelation part



That's basically a chemistry issue somewhat independent of biology.

Metals get chelated by organics. The quality/strength of the chelating bonds are dependent on the structure of the organic substrate.

EDTA is considered a very strong chelator, and often metals in EDTA go right through cells without hardly being touched.

Other organic acids are moderate in chelation strength. Humic acids (using DOC "dissolved organic carbon" as a surrogate measure) are considered in metals toxicity equations.

Chelation can get a bound metal into a biological system easier, but can interfere with the actual induction into the physiological system. 

Since something like Aspartic (or glutamic) acid is utilized for metabolic needs in plants, the carryover effect of metals transport can be a plus (if you really think you are short on trace metals in your feed).


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## papheteer (Oct 9, 2013)

NYEric said:


> Hope that went well.



Thanks, Eric! I don't think it helped much though. That's why I hope my plants could benefit more from it!


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## gonewild (Oct 9, 2013)

papheteer said:


> Thanks, Eric! I don't think it helped much though. That's why I hope my plants could benefit more from it!



Maybe if you had taken it out of the jar it would have helped?


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## Trithor (Oct 10, 2013)

gonewild said:


> Maybe if you had taken it out of the jar it would have helped?



Makes an interesting mental picture:rollhappy:


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