The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has awarded a USD 1.5 million Grand Challenges grant to a team from MIT and Kenyatta University, one of the largest agricultural universities in Africa, to develop bacteria for sustainable, high-yield agriculture.
Led by Christopher Voigt, a professor at MIT, the multidisciplinary research team will use this award to study, engineer and field-test microbes to increase agricultural yields and reduce the use of synthetic fertilisers.
Chemical fertilisers, which deliver nutrients to plants to help them grow, can harm the environment. They are highly energy-intensive to manufacture, giving rise to greenhouse gas emissions, and can run off fields into waterways, polluting them and causing dead zones where aquatic life is starved of oxygen.
Microbes, such as bacteria, naturally perform a similar function to chemical fertilisers in some plants, working among the roots to fix nitrogen into ammonia that nourishes the plants and helps them grow.
The team will begin by collecting and analysing microbes present in soil in farms in the Kisumu region in Kenya and in the United States.
Through genomic sequencing, the team will identify promising species of microbes for nitrogen fixing and then test them in greenhouse conditions at MIT and in the department of biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnology at Kenyatta University.
In the next phase, the team aims to build microbial communities – or consortia – that can coat a maize plant’s roots, are optimised for nitrogen fixing and are stable under a variety of environmental conditions and stresses.
With Tavneet Suri, a professor at the MIT Sloan school of management and co-chair of the agricultural technology adoption initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the researchers will work with small-scale maize farmers in Kenya to test new products and provide the necessary training and logistical support for these tests.
The team will also develop a plan for commercialisation in Kenya and subsequently throughout Africa.
In prior work supported by two J-WAFS seed grants, Professor Voigt and his lab genetically engineered bacteria to improve the secretion of fixed nitrogen and made progress towards expressing nitrogenase in crops.
Related research on microbes was the basis for a company called Pivot Bio, which was cofounded by Professor Voigt.
Its ProveN40 bacterial product is commercially available in the United States and has been demonstrated to reduce synthetic nitrogen use by 20%, produce 97% less greenhouse gas, use 99.9% less water and prevent excess nitrogen runoff into waterways.
Professor Suri from J-PAL is currently running a field trial of PROVEN40 with 500 smallholder farmers in Kenya, half of which are using the engineered nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
The J-WAFS Grand Challenges grants are awarded to advance research that is actionable and solutions-oriented.
Renee J. Robins, executive direct, MIT J-WAFS, said: “This project stood out for its alignment with the J-WAFS Grand Challenge objective of tackling significant challenges in the areas of water and food for human need, specifically in the context of climate change. As the world population grows, farming practices that are both more productive and more sustainable are needed to ensure we can feed the planet without harming the environment. This promising research aims to accomplish that goal.”
This is the second Grand Challenge award by MIT J-WAFS. In 2023, the lab made a grant to an MIT team working to enhance RuBisCo, the photosynthesis enzyme thought to be the holy grail for improving agricultural yield.