Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

The world population has reached a major milestone, as the human population hits 8 billion in November 2022. This continuous increase will require securing global food production and lead to an increase in the exploitation of environmental resources. When land is used intensively for agricultural production, soil fertility declines rapidly, since nutrients are extracted from the soil by crops. Historically, agro-chemicals have been used to mitigate these nutrient losses, and to maintain or increase annual crop yields. However, the increased use of agro-chemicals leads to serious environmental problems in addition to economic losses. Among the future sustainable long-term scenarios to solve this need, the development and large-scale production of biofertilizers based on beneficial microorganisms is of paramount importance. Securing the quality of biofertilizers remain of the utmost importance. Release validation of any microbial-based inoculant is dependent upon rigorous and meticulous control. Lallemand Inc. is committed to the highest quality control standards for the delivery of microbes into the environment while making more efficient the use of natural resources (i.e. conservation agriculture). This industry-driven project aims to bring insights about the development and application of molecular markers in improving QA/QC in production processes at Lallemand Inc. This technology will meet the increased market demand for reliable microbial diagnosis services during large scale production of beneficial microorganisms for agriculture.