History – SEFIN

The Spanish Society of Nitrogen Fixation (SEFIN)

SEFIN was approved by the “Dirección General de Política Interior” on 26 December 1983 and is registered in the “Registro de Asociaciones del Gobierno Civil” in Salamanca with number 581. The SEFIN has therefore completed forty years of existence.

The foundation of SEFIN is linked to the celebration of the I Spanish National Meeting on Nitrogen Fixation on 8-10 June 1983 in Salamanca. This meeting was organized by the Nitrogen Fixation Unit of Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada, which belongs to the Spanish Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC). The organizing committee was chaired by Dr. Claudino Rodríguez Barrueco. This meeting represented the first “get-together” of national experts in biological nitrogen fixation (BNF). The primary aim of this first meeting was to elaborate an inventory of the research performed on BNF in Spain, by encompassing aspects related to the physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, agronomy, industry and ecology of biological systems that carry out BNF in the free-living or symbiotic stage. This included studies of the effects of abiotic, biotic and xenobiotic factors on BNF.

During the first meeting, the statutes of the newborn Society were presented by a committee formed by Dr. Claudino Rodríguez Barrueco as President, Dr. Tomás Ruiz Argüeso as Secretary, Dr. Francisco Bermúdez de Castro y Naya as Treasurer, and Dr. José Olivares Pascual and Dr. Rafael Orive Echevarría as Board members.

The objectives of SEFIN, which are reflected in its statutes, can be summarized as follows:

Promote the development of Nitrogen Fixation and beneficial interactions between plants and micro-organisms.
To boost the organization of scientific meetings and any other events that help establish and keep contact with the scientists interested in the subject
To encourage prestigious foreign scientists to collaborate with Spanish scientists
To establish links with other Spanish and foreign Societies with similar areas of interest, provided this interaction can contribute efficiently to the development of BNF and of the scientific work of their associated members.

Since its foundation, SEFIN has celebrated scientific biennial national meetings.

Starting in 2008, these meetings are being held jointly with Portugal. SEFIN has also collaborated actively in the organization of the First US-Spain Program Development Workshop on Nitrogen Fixation, organized by Dr. Tomás Ruiz Argüeso in Granada in 1985; the V European Nitrogen Fixation Conference, organized by Drs. Antonio Palomares and José Olivares in Sevilla in 2000; the XI European Nitrogen Fixation Conference, organized by Drs. Jose M. Palacios, Juan Imperial, Milagros León-Barrios and Luis Rubio in Tenerife in 2014; and the 20th International Congress on Nitrogen Fixation, organized by Drs. Maria Jesús Delgado, Eulogio Bedmar, Socorro Mesa, Juan Sanjuán, José I. Jiménez-Zurdo, José A. Herrera, Carmen Lluch, Jesús González-López and Belén Rodelas, in Granada in 2017. Likewise, SEFIN has collaborated in the organization of the I and II editions of the Conferencia Iberoamericana de Interacciones Beneficiosas Microorganismo-Planta-Ambiente (IBEMPA) in La Habana (2009) and Sevilla (2013).

Currently, SEFIN has more than one hundred members, who are mainly specialized in the areas of Microbiology, Plant Physiology, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Agronomy. SEFIN affiliates belong to near thirty research groups from CSIC and from public and private universities.

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Estación Experimental del Zaidín, Granada
Estación Experimental de Aula Dei, Zaragoza
Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología, Salamanca
Instituto de Ciencias Agrarias, Madrid
Universidad de Sevilla
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Universidad de Alcalá de Henares
Universidad San Pablo-CEU
Universidad de Salamanca
Universidad de León, Universidad de La Laguna
Universidad Pública de Navarra
Universidad de Granada
Universidad de Córdoba

SEFIN members come also from CIFA Las Torres-Tomejil, administered by Junta de Andalucía (Sevilla), and from Servicio de Investigación, Desarrollo y Tecnología Agraria of the Junta de Castilla y León (Valladolid).

In June 2004 the SEFIN General Assembly approved to incorporate SEFIN into the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies (COSCE). Currently, COSCE embraces more than 80 national scientific societies with a total of more than 40,000 researchers.