Microbial Innovation Meets Gene Editing: New Biological Solutions for Agriculture

Tom Williams, Director of Microbiology at BioConsortia, discusses how beneficial microbes are driving more sustainable agriculture by boosting nutrient availability, soil health, and crop performance. He shares how BioConsortia’s advanced microbial discovery platform and gene editing technologies are unlocking new opportunities for plant health and yield. The conversation also explores regulatory frameworks, grower adoption, and the exciting future of biological solutions in agriculture. 

Transcript

Speaker 1:

AgTech360 discusses breakthrough technologies that are impacting growers, businesses, and consumers. Hear from industry and academic experts about what's on the horizon.

Adrian Percy:

Welcome back to AgTech360. Today, we're joined by Tom Williams, director of microbiology at BioConsortia. Tom and his team have developed a microbial discovery and selection platform that's broadening the range of biological solutions available to growers, and in this episode, we're going to dive into how BioConsortia identifies and develops these beneficial microbes, how their approach compares to traditional gene editing tools like CRISPR, and what the future may hold for microbes in agriculture. Thanks for joining me, Tom.

Thomas Williams:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Adrian Percy:

Let's dive in. So let's start. We have a very general audience, as you know. Some are scientists, some are not scientists, but for those that perhaps do not have the science background, what exactly are microbes? When we're talking about microbes, what are we talking about?

Thomas Williams:

Yeah, that's an important question. The fundamentals are key. So microbes, what they are, they're living organisms. They're living microscopic organisms, and they're quite diverse. So when I think of microbes, I think of bacteria and fungi, but most people stop there, but they also include viruses, protozoa and archaea as well. But for most of what we focus on at BioConsortia, we're thinking about bacteria. Microbes in general though are everywhere. So they're in soil, they're in the water, they're in the air, they're in the food that we eat, and they cover almost every surface of plants and animals, and I think even though we can't see them, they play a key role in plant health. You can really think about them as the hidden helpers of a plant, so that's analogous to how we see the gut microbiome.

Adrian Percy:

And can you talk a little bit to the diversity that we see around microbes in the soil? Because a very complex, very rich environment, right?

Thomas Williams:

That's right. So the soil microbiome is quite complex. You have many different types of bacteria, fungi, and they play an important role, and the diversity of those microbes is impacted by different environmental factors. Where they are. If it's a desert soil, it's going to be a very different microbiome than in the agricultural soil in Iowa or Kansas, and so the diversity of that soil microbiome impacts that plant as well, and that's one of the key things that we try to study.

Adrian Percy:

So you've hinted at it already, but what are the kind of ways that these microbials actually help support sustainable agricultural practices?

Thomas Williams:

One of the things that they do is they alleviate some of those nutrients that are bound up in soil. So even though the soil may be rich in certain minerals, they're in a form that the plants aren't able to access, and so microbes, both bacteria and fungi, are able to break that down and make that into an available form that plants can actually use. An example of that is tricalcium phosphate, microbes play an important role there, making that phosphorus available to the plant. Another one is that organic matter, so they can actually break down organic matter, improving soil health. And so those microbes there are really playing that facilitator, acting as that intermediate between the soil and then the plant roots.

Adrian Percy:

And I guess that finding these microbes and these specific microbes that have these specific properties is not easy at all. As I understand it, BioConsortia has a patented tool to help you identify and cultivate bacterial-based microbes. Can you tell us a little bit more about the science?

Thomas Williams:

Yeah. So we've developed a tool that we call AMS, and what that stands for is Advanced Microbial Selection, and it is a proprietary tool that we've developed over many years here, actually decades, starting with some work down in New Zealand where this company was actually founded. We brought that idea up to Davis, California where we are headquartered now, and we use that to discover novel organisms coming out of the environment. And so it's an important tool that we use, and if I may, I might just walk you through how that works.

One of the key things we start with is a diverse selection of microbiomes, soil microbiomes. You can think of those soils coming from agricultural lands, but they can also come from native soils, things that haven't ever seen a crop like corn or soy. And we can go and pull those microbiomes, collect them, bring them back to our labs here, and we start the process.

So what we do is we take those soils, any where between a dozen soils to hundreds of soils, and we plant the seed in that soil. Now, as that seed germinates, the roots dig into that soil. The microbes there in that unique soil that we've collected are starting to be recruited by the plant, and so you have this association going on where these new microbes are meeting a corn plant for the first time. And so in this what we call micro capture around, the plant and the microbes are again meeting for that first time.

Now, at that point, we harvest the microbiome that that plant has recruited, and we then collect that sample, save it, and then inoculate a fresh round of plants with these microbiomes that have been recruited. So at this stage, we can either apply a stress, either that abiotic or biotic stress, so you can think of a fungal disease, drought, nitrogen stress, those kinds of things, and we can ask that plant under this now stressful condition to recruit those microbes again. So what are those microbes that are actually being able to be pulled out of that soil that are helping that plant overcome that stress? And so again, we ask that plant to recruit microbes out of this microbiome, and we then at this stage look for plants that are performing better. We actually just allow the plants to tell us what microbes are performing best.

Adrian Percy:

And so can you describe a little bit the gene editing platform or system that you are using? Is it a CRISPR based system? Is it different? How does it compare with maybe other systems which are being used currently in plants, for instance?

Thomas Williams:

Yeah, sure. So first, I'll say that CRISPR is a fantastic tool. CRISPR works best when you're editing a small number of strains and specific gene targets where you can really optimize the process. However, this approach really wouldn't work for us, so we've developed some proprietary tools to do our gene editing across a broad range of environmental isolates, both gram negative and gram positive microbes. And our approach using gene editing is making multiple edits across multiple strains simultaneously, and then we evaluate the field performance, the field efficacy of those gene edited microbes as part of our screening platform. And so if we were really focused on one strain or maybe one or two strains, CRISPR would be fine, but really, that wouldn't work in developing a robust portfolio with many different targets. And then of course the additional advantage of not having to license CRISPR technology is absolutely a benefit.

Speaker 1:

The North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative impacts lives through innovative applications and discoveries. By leveraging cutting edge research and technology, we address global challenges related to agriculture, sustainability, and human health.

Adrian Percy:

Tell us a little bit about the situation when it comes to regulatory review, when it comes to genome editing in microbes. We've talked about it on other podcasts when it comes to plants and how things are evolving globally, but what is the situation with microbes?

Thomas Williams:

I think I've heard some other people say as well, it's complex and it really varies from country to country and sometimes more localized than that. But of course, we want to work within the regulatory frameworks that are outlined by different governments and regulators around the world, and so one of the things that we really want to be clear about is being transparent. Here at BioConsortia, we absolutely are transparent with regulators. We give them all the information that they need to ensure that they feel comfortable with us using gene edited microbes, and that really ensures safety for all involved. And so that means genome information, efficacy, data, whatever that they need to feel comfortable, we provide that. So yeah, it's a complex situation. In the US, here, we work through different agencies. They ask for different types of information than folks in Brazil do. And so Brazil, they actually have a really nice established regulation that allows us to import those microbes into Brazil where we've been able to see some early successes.

Adrian Percy:

Fantastic. And now turning to growers, and maybe this is a more general question than just for BioConsortia products, but how have you seen the reception of microbial-based products with growers? Are they excited? What kind of advantages and challenges perhaps do they have with these types of products?

Thomas Williams:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the things that we hear from growers is, one, that they want a product that works. They want to see a consistency, they want to see a return on investment, and they want the product to be easy to use. So some of the things that we've heard, and I'll use the example of our Always-N product that we've launched in New Zealand in 2024 where the feedback we've received on this product has been fantastic. It checks all those boxes. It delivers increased yields, it's reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizer, it's easy to use.

And while this is a wild type organism, this sort of data allows us to then talk to growers who may be skeptical about the technology in general, biologics in general, the use of microbes and say, "Hey, look, it's worked in this environment and people are seeing some returns that are really interesting. Whether this be a wild type for certain countries or gene edited microbes, we believe that we can deliver a biological product that is going to work in your hands," and I think people are excited about that.

Adrian Percy:

So a couple of crystal ball questions to finish up with, Tom, and first is what's next for microbes and where do you see the technology push taking this area? Do you see more tools on the horizon that's going to make these microbes even more efficacious in the field and able to deliver on a number of different end points for growers, as an example?

Thomas Williams:

We're starting to see this play out a little bit where we're using the AMS technology and the gene editing approaches together, so we are coupling now these really powerful tools, AMS and gene editing, and so we're taking the very best natural organisms out of the soil, enhancing them through gene editing products or using that strong wild type and creating these products that are solving some major issues. And so whether that be nitrogen fixation seed treatments or bionematicides or biofungicides or biostimulants in general, I really think that these two technologies, this screening and gene editing, is really able to deliver something quite unique and powerful, and we expect it to grow and continue.

As we've learned more about our microbes and the best way of using them, we expect grower practices of use of biologics to expand. We're seeing it in Brazil. So in Brazil, 90% of growers are using some sort of soybean inoculant. They're becoming more comfortable with the idea of applying these to other cereal crops as well, and so it's becoming the new normal, not only through the use of seed treatments but through other approaches to delivering that biological product to the plant, whether it be through weed tranches or foliar sprays or planter boxes. It's a really exciting time to be in this space.

Adrian Percy:

Well, that's great, Tom, and thanks for joining us today and helping us understand a little bit more about microbial discovery and selection tools. It's really exciting to hear what these new biological solutions might offer in a very short period of time. And it sounds like you already have some products in the market which are already delivering for growers, so good luck to yourself and to BiConsortia moving forward.

Thomas Williams:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

AgTech360 shares relevant news and breakthroughs with audiences across the globe. Stay connected and join the conversation by following NCPSI on social media.