The broader/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to significantly improve fertilization and crop yields in legume agriculture and other crops. Application of light-activated inoculates for crop fertilization will result in an increased legume production and will potentially benefit other crops that are grown in the same fields after harvesting the legumes, as legume crop remnants left in the fields may fertilize those additional crops. The potential customers for this novel technology are the soybean farmers of the Midwestern states and the alfalfa growers in the southwestern USA. The expected yield enhancements using this technique will potentially result in higher profit margins in these important crops.
The I-Corps project develops an innovative way to process bacterial inoculates currently used to fertilize legumes. Legume crops are sprayed with bacteria that live inside the plant roots providing the plant with fertilizing compounds that they produce from air nitrogen. The core technology involved is based on a recent discovery that illumination of these bacteria is required to activate their capacity to penetrate the roots. Spraying the fields with light-activated inoculates constitutes a new, state of the art methodology that could significantly improve fertilization and crop yields over current yields.
