Are Microbes the Next Carbon Crop for Farmers?

by Mindy Ward (Farm Progress) Pluton Biosciences partners with Bayer for a carbon sequestration project. -- Barry Goldman has one goal — to find the next Bt-like row crop breakthrough but for carbon sequestration.

“There are a trillion species of microbes, and the industry has been looking at the same 100 for a long time,” the founder and CEO at Pluton Biosciences says. “But for instance, if you keep looking at the same Bt, you'll never find anything new. We believe we can find the next breakthrough for carbon sequestration because we're looking outside the common organisms. We are looking in the massive diversity that's found in all soil.”

Goldman worked with Monsanto in bioinformatics just as the genomics revolution started. He was there when gene sequencing of rice and corn began. “Those molecular markers really enabled us to do the next generation of breeding,” he says.

Later, he took a position at Indigo Ag, which was strictly biologicals, leading its microbial group.

Today, Goldman has founded St. Louis-based startup Pluton Biosciences, and is using all of his experience in genetic sequencing, biologicals and soils to find microbes to help farmers sequester carbon. The company is sequencing on a massive scale, to the tune of 15 trillion bases of microbial DNA from soil samples.

Plants convert carbon dioxide from the air to produce energy. They deposit carbon in the soil through their roots, while releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. When growers disturb the soil during planting and harvest, the carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere. Taking that carbon out of the air and putting it back into the soil is a new project of Pluton Biosciences.

The company is looking at microbes as a cover crop. “Microbes can put nitrogen in the soil, and if developed correctly, they can suppress disease in the soil," Goldman says.

The product would be a soil amendment. He envisions a tank filled with microbes that farmers include in their spray practices. “We believe that farmers can do this at harvest, at burndown or at planting, and place the microbes out there to just grow,” Goldman says. He says that the process would scrub nearly 2 tons of carbon from the air per acre of farmland per year, all while replenishing nutrients in the soil.

He says microbial cover crops can be grown for $1 to $2 per acre, increase biomass and put carbon in the soil. To make the microbes a truly effective cover crop, the company is looking at organisms that fix nitrogen alongside the photosynthetic organisms.

Pluton Biosciences recently entered into a research agreement with global life sciences company Bayer AG to explore the development of an all-natural, microbial-based carbon-capture soil amendment for growers.

For Bayer, a company that committed to reducing field greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030, long-term carbon storage in the soil is one way to reach this goal. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Post: People needed to find new ways to grow plants — and soon.

She wanted to create “ideal plants” — crops like wheat or rice that are bred to store huge amounts of carbon in their roots. If enough farmers replanted their fields with these engineered species, she said, they could pull as much as 20 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans out of the atmosphere each year.

In time, that speech would get the attention of foundations and pull in millions of dollars in funding, enabling Chory and her colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., to expand their lab and enhance their experiments. They would identify the genes that make plant roots deep and thick and rich in sugar. Their greenhouses and growth chambers would be crowded with seedlings, and their project would be heralded as a revolutionary solution to the biggest problem on the planet.

To hear Chory describe it, photosynthesis is an everyday miracle. Powered by nothing more than sunshine, it converts water and carbon dioxide into flower petals and tree trunks, wide green leaves and spindly stems. Almost all life on Earth owes its existence to this process.

Photosynthesis also shields humanity from the worst consequences of our own actions. Each year, plants take up about a quarter of the planet-warming gases people emit. Put another way: without plants, climate change — which has already disrupted ecosystems and destroyed lives — would be even worse.

“Plants are pretty cool. They’re like a silent partner in all of this,” Chory said. “But nobody ever pays attention to them.” READ MORE