The agriculture industry spends a lot of money to artificially restore soil, but a more comprehensive solution may already exist: allowing beneficial microorganisms to thrive in harsh environments. Puna Bio, which has raised $3.7 million in seed, captures and develops these extremes, making them work in milder climates with their plant-aid processes in overdrive — no genetic modification required.
Whatever you’re trying to do in the biotech world, nature already does it and probably rules it better than you can. So even as we see improved microorganisms applied to agriculture, they will miraculously increase their existing capacity to provide vital nutrients to growing plants. And Poona’s thesis revision is overcrowded with actual creatures.
“Our organisms are used to living with low amounts of nutrients; they have evolved for 2.5 billion years to optimize nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus,” explained co-founder and CEO Franco Martínez Levis on behalf of his team. “For some properties, novel genes Or in other words, they show novel biosynthetic pathways. For others, the number of gene copies is higher compared to non-radical microorganisms, which makes their function more efficient.
Multiple gene copies can enhance the natural processes by which these microbes arise—something fellow microbial agriculture startup PivotBio has demonstrated with its modified organisms. In this case, however, there is no need to activate latent genes or even modify the processes. These critters are already operating at peak performance, reliably producing nitrogen, phosphorus, or other functions in a balanced environment or under conditions where local microbes are rapidly depleted or exhausted. More difficult weather.
“What we found is that it happens when an athlete trains at high altitude,” Levis said. But these bacteria (although archaea, fungi, and yeasts are included in their collection) need more than thin air to build their character. For example, an organism that has evolved to live happily in minute, mineral-rich waters will be different from one that lives in an extremely dry high desert—like “La Puna” in the Andes. .
Aerial photo of a stromatolite, or biologically deposited mineral, and where it is found. Image Credits: Full Bio
“Isolating them is very difficult,” Levis said. “You have to go 4,000 meters above sea level, you have to know the right place and time – you need adventurers, not just scientists. One of my co-founders has the great advantage that he has published more than 150 papers on extremes – she has found many places where we can find them. She invites you to see different places around the world.
That’s co-founder Elisa Violetta Bertini, who has conducted these bioprospecting operations in various locations, most recently at Utah’s Great Salt Lake, to discover and identify interesting new microfauna. Under an international agreement called the Nagoya Protocol, organisms obtained and researched in this way receive something like a patent, which allows the institution, the host country, and the researcher to use them exclusively. So Bertini (and the two other co-founders, Carolina Belfiore and María Eugenia Farias, all PhDs, as it happens) have been working with universities and research organizations around the world to not only write, but also add, more papers about these amazing creatures. Beneficial microbes took them to the Pune library.
Levis was quick, but they do more than sprinkle bacterial fairy dust on crops. The company has developed a method of cultivating, combining and applying these unique varieties to the seed stock.
A Puna Bio worker weighs the seeds, and another examines the seedlings in the greenhouse. Image Credits: Full Bio
This comes with two important caveats: First, farmers must not change the way they buy, plant or sow. Especially in the US, where farmers often buy pre-treated, Poona has taken care to make sure everything works as it should.
Second, these radicals cannot outcompete the existing and perfectly healthy microorganisms in the soil.
“In fact, what we’ve found in some of our tests is a combination of these. [i.e. native or commonly used] Adding beneficial microbes and our microbes,” Lewis said. “You’re actually putting a very small number of microbes into the soil, and they’re so attached to the plant that it doesn’t really affect the rest of the population.”
There they are – the bacteria in question, they are placed between the microscopic root fibers. Image Credits: Full Bio
It seems obvious that a bacterium which produces free nitrogen or phosphorus under one soil and climatic condition may do so in a completely different way than another bacterium under completely identical conditions. Thus, when the two types of organisms work simultaneously, their effects can be combined or even combined.
The $3.7 million seed round was led by A One Ventures and Builders VC, with participation from SP Ventures and Air Capital, as well as existing investors Indibio (SOSV), Glocal and Grid Exponential.
Levis said that the company’s first step in this cash flow is to expand to Brazil and the United States after starting soybean treatment in Argentina, which between the three covers 80% of the market. The company will invest in additional R&D (there are more microbes to test) and new facilities, including one in North Carolina. They hope to bring their approach to wheat and corn by bringing unmodified crops to the performance levels of GM strains.
