Microbial inoculants promote crop yield through biostimulation and biofertilization. The challenge, however, is to improve rhizobial inoculants – inoculants frequently used to promote legume yields so that they remain viable on the plant seed for extended periods of storage before planting and perform optimally once seeded several months later. This process is called on-seed survival.
Lallemand Plant Care is a global leader in the development and commercialization of microbe-based technologies. The company is partnering with Christopher Yost (University of Regina) to create superior rhizobial inoculant strains currently not available to agricultural producers. The strains will improve desiccation tolerance and improve subsequent on-seed survival. To do so, they will use a technique called genome shuffling. With appropriate selection pressures, this technique accelerates normal evolutionary changes. Such a groundbreaking enhancement would be eminently marketable in Canada and globally, either integrated into existing product lines or as a new branded product.
