Microbial Solutions to Agricultural Emissions

The Challenge:

Australia’s agriculture industry faces an uphill challenge to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with food and fibre production.

Additionally, the need to maintain and increase yields while meeting the demands set by international markets and consumers is placing significant pressure on the industry to improve its sustainability outcomes.

Despite the enticing proposition, there is a lack of robust evidence to show that microbial symbiont products reduce agricultural GHG emissions, meaning the technology still requires definitive robust validation.

The Solution:

This project will use targeted microbes to deliver plant growth and health benefits that either directly or indirectly reduce agricultural GHG emissions.  

The research team will use gas and plant tissue analyses to quantify the impacts of these select microbes on GHG emissions and plant growth in the laboratory.

This approach will produce robust datasets that show the organism’s ability to reduce GHG emissions. The methods to gather these datasets will establish the basis of an evidence-based framework for the ongoing assessment and screening of beneficial inoculants.

Outcomes:

• Methodologies to validate microbial solutions and their capacity to directly or indirectly impact GHG emissions.
• Framework for testing microbial inoculants will help with new product development and with regulation regarding claimed benefits of current products. This enables adoption through end-user trust in quality and safety of microbial products.
• Provide confidence to trial and integrate microbial solutions into agricultural systems and/or product ranges.
• These microbial products aim to reduce GHG in agricultural systems by improving N usage efficiencies (or other synthetic fertilisers) and / or microbial metabolism of GHG (e.g. methane), while improving soil health and increased plant biomass yield.

For more information contact projects@foodagility.com