Farmers Are Manipulating Microbiomes to Help Crops Grow
Originally shared by Ward Plunet
Farmers Are Manipulating Microbiomes to Help Crops Grow
Indigo is an agriculture company. But it doesn’t sell seeds or fertilizer or pesticides or any of the typical products agriculture companies have made billions selling in the past century. It sells bacteria, as a coating sprayed onto seeds—bacteria that could replace the chemical fertilizers modern agriculture has come to rely on. And this fall, farmers are harvesting 50,000 acres of the cotton planted with Indigo’s first product, designed to help the crop grow in low-water conditions. Just as the human microbiome has opened up new frontiers in human medicine, scientists think that the plant microbiome could change modern ag....What makes Indigo stand out is its singular focus on bacteria that live inside plants, called endophytes, rather than those that live on or around it.
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/farmers-manipulating-microbiomes-help-grow-crops/
Farmers Are Manipulating Microbiomes to Help Crops Grow
Indigo is an agriculture company. But it doesn’t sell seeds or fertilizer or pesticides or any of the typical products agriculture companies have made billions selling in the past century. It sells bacteria, as a coating sprayed onto seeds—bacteria that could replace the chemical fertilizers modern agriculture has come to rely on. And this fall, farmers are harvesting 50,000 acres of the cotton planted with Indigo’s first product, designed to help the crop grow in low-water conditions. Just as the human microbiome has opened up new frontiers in human medicine, scientists think that the plant microbiome could change modern ag....What makes Indigo stand out is its singular focus on bacteria that live inside plants, called endophytes, rather than those that live on or around it.
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/farmers-manipulating-microbiomes-help-grow-crops/
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