Microbes: The power to protect against drought

When Geoffrey von Maltzahn, its chief innovation officer, started Indigo, it was based on the idea that the evolutionary principles of microbes interacting with the human body were similar to that of plants.

For more than a century, scientists have been aware of the impact of microorganisms in the gut, but it is only in the past 20 years they have come to grips with how they function and affect human health.

Indigo coats seeds with microbes, which it says will provide protection against stresses such as drought, as well as improving yields.

“The advances in [DNA] sequencing technology, as well as computational tools, [meant] we could potentially go about beginning to understand some of the fundamental relationships of these communities in some of the largest crops in the world,” he says.

The spotlight on the use of microbials for agriculture comes amid a rise in environmental concerns over the use of chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, blamed for a decline in soil fertility and water pollution.

The agricultural industry’s interest in microbial is not new. In 2013 Monsanto, the seeds and chemicals group, announced its alliance with Novozymes, a Danish industrial biological company.

Since then, interest has grown and in 2017 more than $860 million across 35 deals was invested in the microbials sector, according to Finistere, the venture capital group, making it the single largest investment area for agritech last year. Bayer entered a joint venture with US start-up Ginkgo Bioworks, while Zymergen raised $160 million in a round with SoftBank. Other microbial start-ups include Pivot Bio.

Indigo has collected more than 60,000 microbes and, through machine learning and data tools, brings those microbes into traditional greenhouse and field trials.