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New Way to Boost Crop Production Doesn’t Rely on GMOs or Pesticides
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601930/new-way-to-boost-crop-production-doesnt-rely-on-gmos-or-pesticides/[font face=Serif][font size=5]New Way to Boost Crop Production Doesn’t Rely on GMOs or Pesticides[/font]
[font size=4]Researchers are fiddling with the plant equivalent of gut bacteria.[/font]
by Mike Orcutt | July 21, 2016
[font size=3]A new treatment for cotton seeds draws on beneficial microbes that live inside plants—much like the good bacteria in our own guts—to help the crops thrive in dry conditions.
The microbe-enhanced cotton, the first product from startup Indigo Agriculture, is already growing on 50,000 acres spread across five different states in the southern United States. Indigo CEO David Perry says the treatment increases yield as much as irrigation can. The company also today announced a new $100 million investment round that brought its venture funding total to $156 million.
Many experts argue that global agricultural productivity is not growing fast enough to keep up with the increase in global demand for food. Intense competition for land and pressures to reduce chemical fertilizer and pesticide use have led technologists to search for new ways to increase yield. Adding beneficial microbes to crops could be an effective but less controversial alternative to genetic engineering.
…
Agriculture companies including Monsanto have already released a number of microbial products. But most of what’s on the market now is focused on organisms that live in soil. Indigo’s focus is on so-called endophytes, or the bacteria and fungi that actually live in the plant tissue. Researchers have studied the interactions between these particular microbes and their plant hosts for several decades, but are just now beginning to realize how to apply what they've learned, according to Betsy Arnold, a professor of plant sciences and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, and an academic collaborator with Indigo.
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Researchers are fiddling with the plant equivalent of gut bacteria.[/font]
by Mike Orcutt | July 21, 2016
[font size=3]A new treatment for cotton seeds draws on beneficial microbes that live inside plants—much like the good bacteria in our own guts—to help the crops thrive in dry conditions.
The microbe-enhanced cotton, the first product from startup Indigo Agriculture, is already growing on 50,000 acres spread across five different states in the southern United States. Indigo CEO David Perry says the treatment increases yield as much as irrigation can. The company also today announced a new $100 million investment round that brought its venture funding total to $156 million.
Many experts argue that global agricultural productivity is not growing fast enough to keep up with the increase in global demand for food. Intense competition for land and pressures to reduce chemical fertilizer and pesticide use have led technologists to search for new ways to increase yield. Adding beneficial microbes to crops could be an effective but less controversial alternative to genetic engineering.
…
Agriculture companies including Monsanto have already released a number of microbial products. But most of what’s on the market now is focused on organisms that live in soil. Indigo’s focus is on so-called endophytes, or the bacteria and fungi that actually live in the plant tissue. Researchers have studied the interactions between these particular microbes and their plant hosts for several decades, but are just now beginning to realize how to apply what they've learned, according to Betsy Arnold, a professor of plant sciences and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, and an academic collaborator with Indigo.
…[/font][/font]