FA Bio awarded over £17,500 by BBSRC Innovation Grant Scheme

Recipients of an important grant for companies making agriculture part of the solution to combat climate change

FA Bio, the revolutionary agriculture microbial discovery and development company, is allocated a £17,606 grant from the BBSRC Campus Impact Acceleration Grant Scheme, supporting tenants of Rothamsted Enterprises and companies in the SHAKE Climate Change Programme..

FA Bio is revolutionising regenerative agriculture and addressing the challenge of climate change by pushing the industry to embrace new innovations that can ensure global food security without destroying our natural ecosystems. Focused on discovering sustainable farming solutions that can restore the biodiversity of degraded soils, FA Bio is identifying unique soil microbes that can enhance or replace the activity of agrochemical inputs, leading the way to developing superior microbial biofungicides and biofertilisers.

The BBSRC funding provides 50% of the total project cost and will allow FA Bio to access the academic and scientific research services available at Rothamsted Enterprises such as the Growth Chambers and Glasshouses, accelerating its discovery projects to the next stage of development. Through its discovery of sustainable alternatives to agrochemicals FA Bio is making a real difference in the evolution of agriculture, minimising its environmental impact whilst sustainably increasing crop productivity.

Dr Kerry O’Donnelly Weaver, COO and Co-Founder of FA Bio said: “FA Bio is pleased to have been awarded grant funding from the BBSRC which will allow us to accelerate our discovery projects and development of superior bioproducts through continued glasshouse and field trials. As the need to solve the problems leading to climate change becomes ever more urgent, FA Bio is fulfilling its mission to discover robust microbial biofertilisers and biofungicides, driving the evolution of regenerative agriculture. Our discovery of sustainable biological alternatives to agrochemicals can provide global food security whilst protecting our natural environments from further deterioration.”

Dr Vijayalakshmi Gunasekaran, R&D Lead at FA Bio commented: “In our discovery of potential bioproducts, we use a targeted sampling approach that enables collection of hard to access and field-adapted microbes for targeted applications. We screen our identified and isolated microbial strains in both laboratory bioassays and glasshouses trials before being evaluated in the field, resulting in microbes that have excellent field activity for desired crops and climates. This grant allows us to accelerate our current projects to discover and successfully develop new biocontrol products that have the potential to be revolutionary in our pursuit of sustainable agriculture and global food security.”