Greater agricultural production with lower nitrous oxide emission (January 2021 - December 2025)

Editing to Improve Agricultural Sustainability

Context of the story

• Inoculant Market = USD 9 billion/year
• Consolidated and growing market (CAGR=10.5%)
• 80% are rhizobia for soybeans (Malba 2023)
• Urea (USD 150/ha) vs Rizobios (USD 15/ha)
• No developments in the last three decades
• Improvement gap between crops vs. inoculants

Improving the genetics of traditional inoculants

The implemented initiative

With support from FONTAGRO and their own resources, INTA, UNSAM, CONICET, IIBCE, UNC, UNFRO, CSIC, and EMBRAPA have started promoting technological innovations in the field of inoculants

Bacterial genetic improvement

The technological solution

• Improvement of current inoculants in use (more scaling)
• Continuous improvement: stacked mutations (generation 1.0, 2.0, etc.)
• Selection of spontaneous and CRISPR/Cas9-edited mutants (non-GMO)
• Acceptance of gene editing as non-GMO (countries = 70% of global population)

“The best in the world are not the best because they win all the points, but because they know they lose time and time again and have learned to deal with it.”
Roger Federer, Doctor of Humanities from Dartmouth University. 2024

Results

Reduction of N2O emissions in alfalfa.
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Reduction of N2O emissions in alfalfa.
Reduction of N2O emissions in soybean.
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Reduction of N2O emissions in soybean.
Increase in nitrogen content in soybean.
+-%
Increase in nitrogen content in soybean.
Glyphosate-tolerant rhizobia for soybean.
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Glyphosate-tolerant rhizobia for soybean.
Supported doctoral theses.
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Supported doctoral theses.
Countries engaged in genetic improvement.
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Countries engaged in genetic improvement.

Participating Organizations

Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) - Argentina
Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable (IIBCE) - Uruguay
Universidad Nacional de Colombia	 (UNAL) - Colombia
Universidad de La Frontera  (UFRO) - Chile
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) - España
Fundación ArgenINTA (ARGENINTA) - Argentina
Empresa Brasileña de Investigación Agropecuaria (EMBRAPA) - Brasil
Instituto Anadaluz de Investigación y Formación Agraría, Pesquera, Alimentaria y de la Producción (IFAPA) - España
Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA) - Uruguay
UdelaR - Uruguay
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) - Argentina
Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) - Argentina
Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) - Argentina
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) - España
Universidad Nacional de Colombia	 (UNAL) - Colombia
Universidad de La Frontera  (UFRO) - Chile
Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable (IIBCE) - Uruguay

Main donors

FONTAGRO
FONTAGRO
© FONTAGRO
E-mail: fontagro@fontagro.org