The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1945 was awarded to Artturi Virtanen "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method".
 

Leguminous plants such as clover, vetch and lucern are green fodder which. when harvested in due season, provide cattle with the vitamins and proteins necessary for them to achieve full production capacity. In his attempts to improve the availability of feeding stuffs in Finland, Virtanen also founded on purely theoretical data his method of preserving green fodder, a method which avoids protein loss and minimizes vitamin loss. One merit of the AIV method is that it also enables second crops of grass gathered in the autumn to be ensilated, regardless of the atmospheric conditions, and thus permits economic use of this fodder which, more often than not, cannot be used as hay. Virtanen is not an office-bound scientist. Himself a farmer, he has tried out the most appropriate ways of applying his ensilation system. The use of the method has increased appreciably during recent years in Denmark and Great Britain.