Providing sub-Saharan smallholders with a cost-effective alternative to expensive artificial nitrogen fertiliser has come a step closer for British agri-biotech company Legume Technology, following the award of a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
The Nottinghamshire company, which has been working on microbial biofertilisers for more than twenty years, will receive £2.15m from the foundation and the UK government.
The project will help develop biofertiliser technology as an affordable, accessible agricultural input for small-scale agricultural producers (SSPs) in Africa. The biofertiliser could increase smallholder yields in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner and improve outcomes for millions of families across the region.
“These farmers face many challenges,” says Dr Bruce Knight, co-founder and managing director of Legume Technology, “of which by far the most significant is access to nitrogen fertilisers.
“The absence of affordable fertiliser options significantly impacts agricultural productivity and livelihoods,” he says. “Synthetic fertiliser is not only too expensive for many of these families, but increased use would also bring its own environmental problems.”
Legume Technology’s work focuses on natural microbes – bacteria and fungi – that have a unique ability to capture the nitrogen that makes up nearly 80% of the air we breathe, making it available to crops. Farmers in the developed world have been using these ‘biological nitrogen-fixers’ (BNFs) for years, but generally they only work on a specific crop type, the ‘legume’ family that includes peas, beans and pulses.
The project will find out how much nitrogen these microbes can fix from the atmosphere, when used in non-legume cereal crops like maize.
Related news:
