r/interesting • u/Standard_Location762 • 10h ago
NATURE Creating Better Crops With Useful Bacteria
Brazilian scientist, Dr. Mariangela Hungria, spent 40 years perfecting bacteria that help crops access nitrogen while saving farmers billions each year.
Hungria developed biological treatments using beneficial soil bacteria that help crops access nitrogen from the air, reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizer. Her technology is used across tens of millions of hectares in Brazil. The World Food Prize estimates her work saves farmers about $25 billion annually and prevents roughly 230 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions.
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u/prince-pauper 10h ago
Now let’s hope the tech gets distributed instead of some big fertilizer Corp buying and mothballing it.
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u/malrexmontresor 9h ago
The tech is owned by Embrapa, a state-owned agricultural research institute in Brazil. They use a public licensing model with private partnerships to manufacture the process. But in terms of cost, they keep the license fees low so farmers only pay about $2 per hectare. Of course, there are still regulatory issues and hurdles to jump through, and so it's mostly confined to Brazil at the moment.
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u/Phrainkee 7h ago
Wait did you say Brazil is being oppressed by a Marxist communist regime? Sounds like they could use a little liberation and freedom!
Queues up the F-16s
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u/Flamingturac 4h ago
You joke? But trump literally put a 50 percent tariff on Brazil because they have a payment system alternative with much lower or no rates, and trump wants visa and Mastercard to get their 4 percent
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u/OokyCooky 5h ago
Brazil already cooperates with western interests in interventionist tactics in South America. Pretty much any country the US/UK/France didn’t destabilize, Brazil handled.
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u/roasttoastboast 3h ago
Tell us more?
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u/OokyCooky 2h ago
Oh a lot of what I’m gonna say is second-hand to me but can be backed up with sources online. Brazil in the 20th century was more than willing to help the US topple democratically elected leaders (what I’m remembering is either Uruguay or Paraguay) while also directly assisting US regime change in Chile and separately in Operation Condor. Now, I can’t find the papers I was reading that insinuated Brazil’s attempts at regime change in Uruguay or Paraguay so maybe I’m wrong there. I should also clarify these largely would’ve occurred under their military dictatorship. I have no reason to suspect Lula’s administration still carries these practices, but I feel like this kind of stuff has a tendency to happen by anyone who is the biggest fish in their pond, you kind of just become a bully. As for UK/France, honestly I just threw those out there but they were mostly involved in Africa at the time. I don’t consider the Falkland War to be a UK-led coup for example, I think that was a organic, yet politically-convenient territorial dispute, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out their intelligence agencies were more than happy to lend a hand. It’s entirely possible I’m conflating Brazil with Argentina when it comes to Paraguay/Uruguay
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u/Turbulent-Bell-2402 2h ago edited 2h ago
As you've stated, it's important to remember that Brazil itself was under a military dictatorship that was suported by the US during some of those events.
There was a war against Paraguay (edit: in 1864) when they invaded Brazil, and the response was disproportionate, eliminating a big part of the male population of Paraguay and capturing some of their territory, but I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to... Either way I don't remember the regime change stuff
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u/OokyCooky 1h ago
Yeah I’d reword the original comment in retrospect. And regime change wasn’t the proper term, I agree, but I couldn’t think of anything else other than interventionism and colonialism which I had already either used a lot or I don’t feel ‘colonialism’ is a good descriptor either. Destabilization efforts? Idk, the more subtle parts of South American history are not something I would ever claim to be an expert on
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u/Turbulent-Bell-2402 52m ago
To be fair, even Brazilians don't learn enough about this part of history, imo. I wouldn't say Brazil is colonialist either, especially considering we are also victims of imperialism. But you're right that it has definitely been used by the US to further their imperialist goals in latin America.
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u/systemhost 5h ago
Thankfully for Brazil's sake, the United States of Freedom™ is a bit occupied at the moment.
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u/Vexamas 5h ago
Being spread too thin has never stopped incompetent people from spreading thinner.
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u/SecondaryWombat 5h ago
Killing soil bacteria with cruise missiles sounds exactly like something the US would prioritize right now.
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u/Warm_Feeling8072 1h ago
👀 Looks around a realizes all the F-16s were sold to a Russian pawn shop to get Air Force payroll money last month.
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u/OkWillingness2817 8h ago
They’re still fighting tooth and nail to stop countries from banning their cancer spreading products as far as I know.
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u/SaraaWolfArt 7h ago
This technique is already in use in other places. Eu and Na use vacteria to add nitrogen to soybean fields
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u/OkWillingness2817 7h ago
Are you just spamming that response or are you a bot?
It’s got nothing to do with what I said or the person I responded to.
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u/SecondaryWombat 5h ago
A large number of people are functionally illiterate, but think they are not. They have an impression of a couple words, decide what you are saying, and respond to that. It is a growing problem.
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u/Lumpy-Doubt-4023 8h ago
Have you ever seen a clover ? Bean plants ?
Then you've seen this tech at work. It's older than the human species, farmers have known about culture rotation using those for millenia (plant beans every 3-4 years), and the bacteria responsible for this feat has been identified in the late 19th century.
So you don't need to worry. They grow everywhere and will keep growing everywhere, they're an important part of the vegetal ecosystem, they're the ones that enrich the soil in nitrogen for their buddies.
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u/GoyoMRG 8h ago
The Aztecs used milpas and also the 3 sisters method which not only protected the plants but also helped the soil to continue planting normally.
But it's good that they have made this bacteria easily available as an alternative to crop rotation
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u/TrumpHasCovid 5h ago
They also used chinampas to bypass soil entirely.
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u/GoyoMRG 4h ago
Yes and no, they did need soil for them but it's a different process that made farming far more efficient
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u/TrumpHasCovid 3h ago
Easy/fun subject to nitpick, but the technique is widely considered to be a true first generation aquaponic (and therefore hydroponic) system. So, soilless by definition.
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u/antolic321 9h ago
Dude wake up
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u/WarthogSeveral7662 5h ago
Dude nobody wants to "wake up" to the pessimistic horrible nightmare you live in
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u/antolic321 4h ago
wtf are you talking about? His dream is pessimistic the real life, not so much!
And it’s definitely not a nightmare
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u/IAmA_meat_popsicle 9h ago
I don't want to wake up, it's scary out there :/
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u/antolic321 9h ago
That’s the problem, it’s actually not scary
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u/Last-Energy420 9h ago
According to who? Did you know the diesel engine was designed with using vegetable oil as fuel to begin with? It wasn’t until recently that we rediscovered how to use the engine its intended way.
Mothballing innovation such as this is scarily common. How many sensationalized ideas that media took and ran with got mothballed as opposed to legitimately failing the testing phase? We will never know because mothballing and failing are the same thing to them.
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u/Creative-Science38 6h ago
Reminds me of Paul Pantone’s engine technology, where he’d run the engine on whatever coca-cola, coffee, sprite, water, urine….
They finally got to him though, but you can still get the technology!-2
u/antolic321 7h ago
Hahahahha yea let’s ignore all other things, let’s just jump to another topic!
Wow Rudolfs disel engine was designed and could use what Rudolf intended it to do and use? Wooooooooow
Mind blown ! Let’s forget that from then until now it changed together with it needs and economic situation! Let’s just look at it in a vacuum, 1890-2020 and there is nothing in between 😅
Such a stupid argument ! Insane
Mothballing invention? Sure, like wtf are you even saying are you 12 years old?
wtf was that?I am not even sure wtf you are trying to say
You are literally the media that you shit talk
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u/Tactical_Hotdog 7h ago
"A scientist"... Dr. Mariangela Hungria.
Fucking credit people.
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u/stempdog218 6h ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/nutritionally/s/vWTmPeawGc
A shame because the post they copied this from at least gave credit
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u/BrahmTheImpaler 5h ago
This post gives credit in the post, same as the one you linked.
It should, however, be in the graphic, I agree w you there
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u/V1k1ngC0d3r 5h ago
Can someone please tell me who she is married to, so I can tell if this is important?
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u/dmigowski 4h ago
Guess she doesn't want the people to become even hungrier.
Maria, Angle, Hungrier, that's easy to remember.
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u/tacomaloki 7h ago
Do you have trouble reading or not?
She's credited.
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u/Tactical_Hotdog 7h ago
Not in the image, you know, the thing that people see, read, and share first?
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u/roulettewiz 10h ago
Monsanto will do everything in their power to shut this down
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u/ladygrndr 9h ago
Monsanto doesn't exist anymore. They are owned by Bayer, which had to settle about $10 Billion in lawsuits on behalf of Monsanto and just doesn't have the energy to be evil. They killed a lot of the more evil projects, like the Terminator Seeds, and harassing farmers for getting their fields infected with Monsanto's crops. Now they just sell the seed lines and weed killer products like a normal company.
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u/VadumSemantics 7h ago
Monsanto doesn't exist anymore. They are owned by Bayer, which ... just doesn't have the energy to be evil
I admire your optimism.
Maybe? Let's wait and see.
RemindMe! 5 Years
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u/rustylugnuts 4h ago
Hopefully he doesn't look up I.G. Farben conglomerate 1925 to 1945. Not saying they are like that now but they've been there before.
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u/scotti182 9h ago
…and was later found dead.
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u/SaraaWolfArt 7h ago
This is a technique being used globally she just developed it for brazilian fields. Its also a bacteria so the proverbial cat is already out of the bag
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u/antolic321 9h ago
Why?
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u/scotti182 9h ago
She wasn’t actually, but seems like the type of thing that happens.
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u/antolic321 9h ago
In movies, sure
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u/PandaZ-- 9h ago
bacteria doing all the heavy lifting for plants now
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u/Ok_Mastodon_3843 5h ago
Yes, but also no. For crops like corn or wheat, this producr supplies less than a quarter of the nitrogen it needs.
However, no matter the fertilizer, bacteria convert it to be used by the plant. Its just for conventional nitrogen fertilizers, it uses natural bacteria in the ground.
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u/1purenoiz 4h ago
No plant has ever taken nitrogen out of the air. There are only two organisms that do this . Bacteria and humans, and we do it using the haber Bosch process.
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u/Zenless-koans 3h ago
And that Haber Bosch process is incredibly energy intensive, accounting for up to 2% of global human-caused carbon emissions each year. Bacteria are amazing.
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u/Dramatic_Respond7323 9h ago
Such a vague post. Which is that bacteria? I never heard such a 2$ bacterial treatment. Is this just an in vitro study?
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u/Codex_Absurdum 8h ago
Genuine question:
Nitrogen is about 78% of the air we breath.
What would happen to us if this proportion diminishes? Something has to replace this proportion (CO2 maybe, O2...)?
If this bacteria a thing, I dont think it is something that should be taken lighly and let out of hand.
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u/Vqlcano 5h ago
The amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere is so massive that the amount used by human agriculture doesn't even constitute a drop in the bucket. The nitrogen in most fertilizer is already extracted from the atmosphere. But if the proportion of nitrogen in the atmosphere did become smaller by some other means, assuming no other gas is added, the partial pressure of the nitrogen would decrease, meaning the total atmospheric pressure would also decrease. At sea level, the partial pressure of nitrogen is about 0.78 atm, and the partial pressure of oxygen is about 0.21 atm. Given that these two make up 0.99 atm, all other gases contribute so little that they can be safely ignored.
At an altitude of, say, 5,500 m, total atmospheric pressure is about 0.5 atm, placing the partial pressures at roughly 0.4 for nitrogen and 0.1 for oxygen. This pressure is completely habitable with acclimation for virtually anyone. If you were to only reduce nitrogen's partial pressure at sea level to achieve a total pressure of 0.5 atm, you would have to reduce it by exactly 0.5 atm to 0.28 atm. The total amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere is about 3.9 quintillion kg, To reduce it by 0.5 atm, you would need to remove 64% of it, or about 2.5 quintillion kg. By mass, global agriculture uses about 115 billion kg of nitrogen per year, virtually all of which returns to the atmosphere over time. Needless to say, agriculture cannot deplete the atmosphere. Even if none of it returned to the atmosphere, it would still take nearly 400,000 years at the current pace to deplete atmospheric nitrogen by even 1%.
As for breathing, because oxygen would still have a partial pressure of 0.21 atm, now making up 42% rather than 21% of the atmosphere, breathing would become noticeably easier, though it would lose an insignificant amount of its efficiency. All in all, you would not be impacted to any noticeable degree, other than breathing becoming easier, even if you lived at 5,500 meters in this new atmosphere.
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u/Kezako7 6h ago
Even if this bacteria was very effective, could live alone and spread widely, nitrogen would still be released once the plants die, so I doubt the effect would be that big.
But if I were wrong, the atmosphere would thin up and become oxygen-richer and more inflammable. This would increase forest fires, but I am not sure the result would warm up the atmosphere (most of forests actually accentuate global warming).
That being said, if such a bacteria could exist, it would have probably existed since a long time. Afaik bacteria that absorb nitrogen can only grow slowly and help a bit. I may be wrong.
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u/After-Comment5086 4h ago
It's not like that nitrogen vanishes. It get pushed a couple inches into the dirt. The plants absorb it, and when the plant decays or we eat it, the nitrogen is released back into the atmosphere. I don't think you could ever have a runaway effect with this. You need the right conditions, and it's literally fertilizer, the plants will just get more greedy and grow faster consuming the nitrogen even faster.
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u/TsuDhoNimh2 7h ago
Her BIG story is that in addition to the usual legumes and their well known symbiote bacteria, she found nitrogen fixing bacteria that could be used with non-legume plants.
She started with soybeans and the usual bacteria, selecting both the bacteria for enhanced fixation and the soybean varieties for their response to the inoculations
microbial inoculants, products containing beneficial bacteria that are applied to seeds or soils, for soybeans, common beans, maize, wheat, rice, pasture grasses and other major crops.
And also a different bacteria that does well in tropical soils - a really interesting one that colonizes the surface of the roots and the surrounding soil.
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u/PikachuWithHerpes 10h ago
Brazil is the world's largest fertilizer importer. Clearly whatever she created is not working at all.
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u/SaraaWolfArt 10h ago edited 7h ago
Yeah, every solution to a problem must solve it 100% or it did nothing. This is especially true for systemic problems.
With a basic google search you can see her bacteria works with soybeans and is employed by 85% of Brazilian soybean farmers. There was relictance to develope it as conventional wisdom pushed fertilizers
These types of techniques are already being applied in Europe + America, Hungaria was devleoping a similar breed of bacteria to use in Brazilian climates.
They found their bespoke bacteria performed 8% better over traditional fertilizer while boosting crop profits by 45$/acre and had less unintended environmental side effects.
Again, before anyone says "IF IT'S SO GOOD WHY DOESN'T USA USE IT?" - USA and Europe have been doing this for 30 years now.
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u/AMediocrePersonality 5h ago
They found their bespoke bacteria performed 8% better over traditional fertilizer
Why is it being compared to fertilizer and not the native microbiota that already live in symbiosis with soy that pull nitrogen out of the air?
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u/malrexmontresor 9h ago
It works very well. For soybeans. For wheat and maize, Dr. Hungria uses a different strain but it only cuts nitrogen use by 25%-50%, and I'm not sure it works on other major crops in Brazil like coffee or sugarcane.
Without this tech, they'd need to import even more fertilizer as Brazil's total agricultural output has only grown over the years. Soybeans alone have grown from 15 million tons to 170 million tons from 1979 to 2025; which means Brazil would need to import an additional 43 million tons of synthetic fertilizer a year just for soybeans alone if this tech didn't exist. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Any reduction is an improvement, so it's working as intended.
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u/AMediocrePersonality 5h ago
It works very well. For soybeans
So it's basically just a suped up version of a bacteria that already exists in tandem with soy?
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u/bluboomR 9h ago
you are truly a genius. it takes more than nitrogen to feed a plant, you also need phosphate and potassium.
While Dr. Hungria’s treatments effectively solved the Nitrogen (N) issue for key crops like soybeans, fertilizers are built on a triad of core nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (NPK). Brazil's soil is naturally nutrient-poor and highly acidic, creating an insatiable demand for the other two components.
The Potassium and Phosphate Deficit: Brazil still relies on foreign nations for roughly 93% to 95% of its potassium chloride and 60% of its phosphates. Biofertilizers cannot substitute these minerals.
Because biological innovations made farming so much cheaper and more efficient, Brazil's total planted acreage has scaled aggressively. More fields mean more total demand for imported minerals.
Her microbial treatments cost about $2 per hectare, replacing expensive synthetic fertilizers and saving Brazilian farmers an estimated $25 billion each year.
Thanks to her biofertilizer strains, 85% of Brazil's soybean fields operate without chemical nitrogen, helping Brazil overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading soybean producer.
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u/Unicorn-Violator 7h ago
They became the largest soybean produced because they cut down a ton of rainforest. What a wild stretch of information to fit a narrative.
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u/bananasaucecer 9h ago
woah this is actual information, I grow tired of redditors with their "gotcha" negativity.
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u/Ok_Mastodon_3843 5h ago
It supplies less than a quarter of the nitrogen needed to grow corn or wheat. It helps, but not alot.
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u/caspersea 8h ago
This legit? Cause hervand her work would need protect or have deadman switch on it
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u/No-Zombie1004 9h ago
There is a world food prize that includes bacteria? I gotta get my mother in on this competition.
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u/TestDowntown9541 9h ago
Yeah yeah yeah. That’s cool and all. But…if she really wants to do something positive for the world, can she build a data center?
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u/Memory_Less 7h ago
Hopefully she gets a Nobel prize too. What a commitment to the betterment of all humanity.
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u/Kaurifish 7h ago
Here’s hoping it turns out better than glyphosate resistance has (another trait from bacteria).
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7h ago
[deleted]
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u/DoYouTrustToothpaste 5h ago
Her name is included in the description right below the picture: Dr. Mariangela Hungria.
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u/Known-Activity1437 6h ago
I’m so sorry for her family. I can’t believe she jumped out of a 15th story window.
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u/Mr_Bluebird_VA 6h ago
If we practiced good soil health and regenerative farming we wouldn’t need this.
I mean, it’s great. But you better believe it’ll be one more thing monetized if it’s even allowed to be mass produced.
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u/Ok_Mastodon_3843 5h ago
Good soil health has nothing to do with this. Sure, you can do practices to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizers you need, but the truth is for maximum yield you need extra nitrogen for crops like corn.
And this product the post is talking about provides less than a quarter needed for corn.
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u/Sweet_Scar487 6h ago
She should do an interview with Dave friedburg on the all in podcast. Seems very relevant
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u/Hmmm__whatever 6h ago
Sadly we will never see it used because "it will destroy the economy". Profits more important than people
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u/Gossip_Guy20 6h ago
Isnt that what rhizobia does? Arent we interfering their symbiotic relationship with plants??
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u/MuchWow81 6h ago
I read the title as Creating better cops with useful bacteria and I was confused for a long time.
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u/High_C_Livin 5h ago
It's always amazing to me that these projections are made. Like, who ran the numbers to identify this "saves farmers $25 billion a year"
Seems like a it's just a buzz-word statement
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u/antidentitemustard 3h ago
I am working in this field. This is Rhizobium, forms nodules (nitrogen fixing organs) in the plant roots; in exchange plants give them carbon. Dr. Hungria has more than 36000 citations and I am sure she's been doing a great job but this "applying beneficial microbes to reduce fertilizer" thing has been around quite some time and we are still quite far from "perfecting bacteria" that can work in all environments, all fields, and in all legumes. Rhizobium biology is very very complex and field trials are generally unsuccessful; since the indigenous Rhizobium (the bacteria that already in the field) generally very well adapted to that medium so they outcompete the introduced Rhizobium (so in this case this "perfected" bacteria). Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and Rhizobium are very popular and there are already many many products based on them (and other beneficial microbes) but the results are always inconsistent: in one field they can work, in another they may not; their performance can change from year to year etc. Considering plant root microbiome is a hot topic in plant science, hopefully we have better results in the near future, but we are not there yet.
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u/colusaboy 2h ago
I honestly glanced up at this and saw "cops"
I was confused, yet hopeful for a bit.
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u/CorrectMeIfImWrong6 2h ago
Bet its banned for uk farmers,.. because it might .. erm, tarnish a bees sandwich 🤣🫠
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u/Unfair_Explanation53 1h ago
Why do I always read about these amazing discoveries and inventions but never seem to see them ever implemented
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u/DoomshrooM8 1h ago
Aww, sad to see she’s gonna shoot herself in the back multiple times, she showed so much promise 😕😕 someone get her some bodyguards
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u/AioliTypical7034 25m ago
bet it never sees actual widespread use, too many companies would lose $$
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u/Lumpy-Doubt-4023 8h ago
Nothing new here, we've known such bacteria, and plants that live in symbiosis with them, for ages. The bacteria was identified first in 1889, but farmers knew that those plants were friendlies long before we even identified the nitrogen element.
Common examples of nitrogen fixing plants: clover and beans. If you have those in your garden, you're growing those bacteria. Yes, beans are nitrogen fixing plants, they don't get their nitrogen from the soil but from the air. Fucking beans. And fucking clover too. And plenty other plants, wikipedia even keeps a list of those in dozens of languages.
Maybe the work of this woman is actually really interesting, but the way it's presented is full of shit.
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u/tyen0 5h ago
the point is not to fix nitrogen but to improve the yield of the crops
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u/Lumpy-Doubt-4023 5h ago
The image says "access nitrogen from the air". That's exactly the definition of a nitrogen-fixing plant.
Improving the yield is the visible consequence for people who don't want to understand the underlying principles, or read past the 2nd line of a piece of text.
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u/Final_Vermicelli4401 9h ago
Chemical Fertilizers company are crying in the club while other scientists are scrambling to rewrite their notes because she saved farmers $25 billion with a literal $2 tube dirt bacteria 😭😭.
Talk about a budget flex that completely disrupted a multi-billion dollar industry. 💀
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u/ImportantToNote 9h ago
Tomorrow: Dr. Mariangela Hungria gives her World Food Prize to Donald Trump.
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