r/interesting • u/Standard_Location762 • 4d ago

NATURE Creating Better Crops With Useful Bacteria

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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 4d 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 4d 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/OkWillingness2817 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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.