£2.45 million gift launches novel research to sustainably increase crop yields

Researchers are testing soil microbial communities to protect ecosystems thanks to a £2.45 million donation from the Michael Uren Foundation. This research aims to address one of greatest challenges facing humanity: how to feed the world's growing population without destroying natural ecosystems. Continued agricultural expansion is the major driver of natural habitat loss, which in turn is triggering a biodiversity crisis and the sixth mass extinction event in the history of the planet. There is a need for agricultural intensification to produce more food from the same quantity of land; but pesticides, fertilisers and the genetic modification of crops can be bad for human and environmental health. Microbes, the second-most abundant organisms on Earth (after plants), constitute the majority of biodiversity on Earth and control the flows of nutrients and energy within and between organisms. Recent studies have shown that certain soil microbes can suppress crop diseases, either by competing for food with them, or directly inhibiting their growth. However, past attempts to treat crops with individual strains of beneficial microbes have been ad hoc and limited in scope and scale.