SBIR Phase I: Microbiome for improving salt stress tolerance in crops

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to provide an innovative approach to improve crop tolerance using novel seed treatments. To feed the growing world population (estimated 9.8 billion by 2050), global food production must increase by 70%, while reducing impact on land use, the environment, and ecosystems. However, high salinity conditions and drought have reduced the potential yield of crops; furthermore, the excessive application of fertilizers is disrupting global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, reducing biodiversity, and causing aquatic pollution. This project will develop a technology to promote crop growth through improved stress tolerance and nutrient acquisition. The adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices could help farmers in increasing their profitability and reduce costs. This project will offer an effective solution to 570 million farms around the world for food production. By improving crop yield, the project could help address the economic loss of more than $27 billion/year in the US due to unproductive farmland. The proposed project will generate innovative endophyte-based formulations for seed treatments to improve tolerance to abiotic stress. Seeds will be coated with a mixture of highly characterized safe (non-pathogenic) endophytic bacteria and yeast strains in formulation with selected osmoprotectants and prebiotics that improve the survivability and efficacy of the selected microbes. The bio-inoculants will improve crop tolerance to salinity stress while supporting nitrogen fixation and mineral nutrient acquisition. This project will validate the feasibility of this approach on treatments for selected vegetable seeds. First efforts will be dedicated to obtaining stable seed treatment formulations with a high shelf-life when used at scale in parallel with fungicide and insecticide treatments. The ability of bio-inoculant formulations to increase tolerance to salinity will be validated in the greenhouse. Finally, the performance of the most optimal formulation will be tested in a small field trial under high salinity conditions to validate its ability to increase crop yield and quality. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.