The Haber-Bosch method, which transforms atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia fertilizer, revolutionized agriculture and assisted in feeding the increasing global population, but it also generated significant environmental challenges. It is among the most energy-demanding chemical reactions globally, accounting for 1-2 percent of worldwide energy use. Additionally, it emits nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas that damages the ozone layer. Surplus nitrogen routinely drains from farms into waterways, endangering aquatic life and contaminating groundwater.
Instead of synthetic fertilizers, Pivot Bio has developed nitrogen-generating microbes to enhance farming sustainability. Co-founded by Professor Chris Voigt, Karsten Temme, and Alvin Tamsir, the company has tailored its microbes to inhabit plant roots, where they consume the root’s sugars and precisely release nitrogen in exchange.
Pivot’s microbial colonies thrive alongside plants, producing increased nitrogen precisely when needed, thereby reducing nitrogen runoff.
“Historically, we have supplied nutrients for plant growth through fertilizers, which is an inefficient method to acquire all essential nutrients,” states Temme, Pivot’s chief innovation officer. “Now we have the capability to assist farmers in becoming more effective and productive using microbes.”
Farmers can substitute as much as 40 pounds per acre of conventional nitrogen with Pivot’s solution, which constitutes about a quarter of the total nitrogen required for crops like corn.
Pivot’s offerings are currently employed to cultivate corn, wheat, barley, oats, and other cereals across millions of acres of American farmland, resulting in the elimination of hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 equivalent. The company’s influence is even more remarkable given its unexpected beginnings, which trace back to one of the most formidable periods of Voigt’s career.
A Shift from Despair
The outset of each faculty member’s career can be a critical moment, and according to Voigt, he found himself overwhelmed. As a newly appointed assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco, Voigt was grappling with establishing his laboratory, securing funding, and initiating experiments.
Sometime around 2008, Voigt joined a research team from the University of California at Berkeley that was crafting a grant proposal centered on photovoltaic materials. His initial contribution was minor, but when a senior researcher withdrew from the group a week prior to the submission deadline, Voigt stepped in.
“I said, ‘I’ll complete this section in a week,’” Voigt recalls. “It was my significant opportunity.”
In the proposal, Voigt outlined an ambitious strategy to reorganize the genetics of biological photosynthetic systems for improved efficiency. He barely managed to submit it in time.
Several months passed before the proposal reviews finally arrived. Voigt rushed to the meeting with some of the most prominent researchers at UC Berkeley to discuss the feedback.
“My segment of the proposal was completely criticized,” Voigt states. “There were roughly 15 reviews on it — they surpassed the length of the actual grant — all one after another criticizing my proposal. All the most renowned figures were in this meeting, future energy secretaries, future university leaders, and it was incredibly humiliating. After that meeting, I contemplated leaving academia.”
A few discouraging months later, Voigt received a call from Paul Ludden, the dean of the School of Science at UC Berkeley. He wanted to discuss.
“As I entered Paul’s office, he was perusing my proposal,” Voigt recalls. “He seated me and said, ‘Everyone’s telling me how awful this is.’ I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ But then he stated, ‘I believe there’s potential here. Your idea is solid; you simply selected the wrong system.’”
Ludden went on to advise Voigt that he should apply his gene-swapping concept to nitrogen fixation. He even proposed sending Voigt a postdoctoral researcher from his lab, Dehua Zhao, to assist. Voigt paired Zhao with Temme, and the resulting 2011 publication from their collaboration received a warm reception from the nitrogen fixation community.
“Nitrogen fixation has been a long-sought goal for scientists, agronomists, and farmers for nearly a century, ever since the discovery of the first microbe capable of fixing nitrogen for legumes like soybeans,” Temme explains. “Everyone has always claimed that one day we would achieve this for cereal crops. The excitement with Pivot was that this is the first instance where technology became accessible.”
Voigt had transitioned to MIT in 2010. When the paper was published, he established Pivot Bio alongside Temme and another Berkeley researcher, Alvin Tamsir. Since then, Voigt, who holds the Daniel I.C. Wang Professorship at MIT and leads the Department of Biological Engineering, has continued collaborating with Pivot on initiatives like enhancing nitrogen production, increasing strain stability, and making them responsive to various plant signals. Pivot has licensed technology from MIT, and the research has additionally received backing from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS).
Pivot’s initial objectives included securing regulatory approval and establishing a presence in the market. To gain approval in the U.S., Pivot’s team concentrated on utilizing DNA from within the same organism instead of introducing entirely new DNA, which simplified the approval process. They also collaborated with independent corn seed distributors to deliver their product to farms. Initial deployments took place in 2019.
Farmers apply Pivot’s solution during planting, either as a liquid sprayed onto the soil or as a dry powder that is rehydrated and utilized as a seed coating. The microbes inhabit the surface of the developing root system, consuming plant sugars and releasing nitrogen throughout the plant’s growth cycle.
“Presently, our microbes colonize just a small fraction of the total sugars supplied by the plant,” Temme elaborates. “They’re also sharing ammonia with the plant, and all of these elements represent only a segment of what’s technically feasible. Our team is constantly seeking ways to improve the efficiency of those microbes in acquiring the energy they require for growth or in fixing nitrogen and distributing it to the crop.”
In 2023, Pivot initiated the N-Ovator program to link companies with growers practicing sustainable farming using Pivot’s microbial nitrogen. Through this initiative, companies purchase nitrogen credits, allowing farmers to get compensated by verifying their practices. The program was recognized as one of the Inventions of the Year by Time Magazine last year and has disbursed millions of dollars to farmers to date.
Microbial Nitrogen and Beyond
Pivot is presently selling to farmers throughout the U.S. and collaborating with smallholder farmers in Kenya. They also aim to secure approval for their microbial solution in Brazil and Canada, which they foresee as their next markets.
“How do we create an economically viable solution for everyone — the farmers, our partners, and the company?” Temme articulates Pivot’s mission. “Because this can genuinely be a deflationary technology that transforms the highly costly traditional methods of fertilizer production.”
Pivot’s team is also expanding the product to cotton, and Temme asserts that microbes can serve as a nitrogen source for any type of plant globally. Looking ahead, the company believes it can assist farmers with additional nutrients vital for crop growth.
“Now that our technology is established, how can Pivot aid farmers in overcoming all the other challenges they encounter with crop nutrients to optimize yields?” Temme inquires. “That fundamentally alters how a farmer approaches managing the entire acre from perspectives of cost, productivity, and sustainability.”