Text | Lin Guangyuan
Editor | Hai Ruojing
36氪 was informed that “Green Nitrogen Bio”, a synthetic biological nitrogen fixation company, has recently completed a seed round of financing of 10 million yuan, exclusively invested by Source Code Capital. This round of financing is used for high-throughput screening laboratory platform construction, R&D and management team formation.
Green Nitrogen Bio was established in June 2022. It is a synthetic biological nitrogen fixation technology innovation and industrial application to provide biological nitrogen supply solutions for agricultural production. Founder and CEO Dr. Ma Ruiqiang graduated from China Agricultural University with a major in microbiology, a representative of the 12th National People’s Congress, and a leading talent of the National “Ten Thousand Thousand Program”; Chief Scientist Lin Min is a researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and won the National Outstanding Youth Fund. He is the chief scientist of the National 973 Program, and has accumulated nearly 30 years of research and development in biological nitrogen fixation genomics and synthetic biology.
Recently, the founding team of Green Nitrogen Bio was interviewed by 36氪, telling about Green Nitrogen Bio’s technology, business planning, and insights into the field of biological nitrogen fixation.
Products and Technologies
Excessive application of chemical nitrogen fertilizers will cause soil acidification and water pollution, and the production process of chemical nitrogen fertilizers will also increase carbon emissions. Biological nitrogen fixation refers to the process of using nitrogen-fixing microorganisms to reduce nitrogen in the air to ammonia, which can sustainably provide nitrogen for crops to grow. At present, the industrialization of biological nitrogen fixation focuses on the preparation of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and there are also solutions for inoculating rhizobia on legumes.
At present, Green Nitrogen Bio has a product that uses nitrogen-fixing bacteria as seed coating agent and nodule-like nitrogen-fixing bacteria fertilizer to realize simultaneous sowing of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and seeds, which is suitable for modern agricultural production methods. At present, related products have obtained invention patents.
Ma Ruiqiang said, “The fastest green nitrogen product that can be brought to the market is nitrogen-fixing inoculants, and new technologies such as seed coating agents are being advanced. This includes the development of artificial materials with the properties of maintaining bacterial vitality, directional binding of root surfaces, and precise and efficient fertilization. Synthetic process, improve the production process of functional strain combination formulation and seed coating, establish a field benefit evaluation technology platform such as intelligent sensor, simulated natural water/temperature change device and in-situ measurement of nitrogen fixation activity, and create a platform suitable for mechanized sowing, water and fertilizer integration Nitrogen-fixing microbial products such as drip irrigation and soilless cultivation.”
Comparison of Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Chemical Nitrogen Fertilizers
Green nitrogen organisms have obtained a series of nitrogen-fixing microbial strains from different ecological environments or extreme environments such as the central area of nuclear explosion, Gobi Desert, saline-alkali land, deep sea, the estuary of the Yellow River, and pollution sources in the factory area, forming a nitrogen-fixing strain library. In addition, a series of artificially domesticated or genetically engineered strains have been created. Lin Min told 36氪, “The team focuses on the development of rhizosphere nitrogen-fixing microorganisms such as Pseudomonas stuarteri and spore strains. After the chassis modification, it has high nitrogen-fixing efficiency, stress resistance and plant growth promotion ability.” Previously, Lin Min The team revealed that nitrogen-fixing gene islands in nitrogen-fixing strains came from horizontal transfer during evolution. “In industrial applications, this type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria is our main product.”
The development of the nitrogen-fixing ability of ammonium-resistant ammonium-secreting bacteria is also a part of the technical accumulation of the Green Nitrogen team, and related achievements won the Biotechnology Excellence Award in the 2021 “National Disruptive Technology Innovation Competition” of the Ministry of Science and Technology. At this stage, biological nitrogen fixation can only partially replace chemical nitrogen fertilizers, which generally need to be applied at the same time as chemical nitrogen fertilizers, and the nitrogen fixation efficiency of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms is inhibited in the presence of chemical nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, the use of ammonium-resistant ammonium secretion technology is expected to solve this bottleneck problem. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria can still efficiently fix nitrogen in the environment of nitrogen fertilizer application in farmland, providing the biological nitrogen needed for crop growth, which will greatly improve the replacement ability of chemical nitrogen fertilizer.”
The development of other anti-stress properties of nitrogen-fixing bacteria is also the focus of the team. “By incorporating extremophile elements, the team enhanced the stress resistance of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, such as salinity resistance or herbicide resistance.” In addition, Lin Min emphasized, “The effect of green nitrogen organisms is not only nitrogen fixation, but also It also dissolves phosphorus and potassium to promote crop growth.”
Lin Min is also a member of the national key research and development plan synthetic biology key special expert group and an expert of the fertilizer registration review committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. He told 36氪, “At present, the country is promoting the application of synthetic biotechnology in agriculture. It will be one of the important breakthroughs in industrialization, and the construction of the national standard system of microbial fertilizers such as strain safety standards, product standards, method standards and technical regulations is currently being strengthened.”
Green Nitrogen will measure multiple indicators for its own products, including bacterial count, nitrogen fixation efficiency, ability to dissolve phosphorus and potassium, and stress resistance. Currently, the Green Nitrogen Bio team is also developing high-throughput testing methods for bacterial viability and nitrogen fixation efficiency.
“The rapid and efficient determination of nitrogen fixation activity is a difficult point in current research. The traditional N15 isotope determination method is more troublesome, and the currently commonly used acetylene reduction method is relatively simple, but it is still difficult to achieve high throughput.” Lin Min said, “The follow-up pass The construction of an automated workstation is expected to increase the assay throughput. In the context of high throughput, green nitrogen will enhance AI capabilities, enabling intelligent design and automatic optimization.”
market and cost
Ma Ruiqiang told 36氪, “At present, the annual consumption of nitrogen fertilizer in my country is nearly 22 million tons. If biological nitrogen fertilizer can replace 20% of it, it will reduce the use of nearly 5 million tons of chemical nitrogen fertilizer, and discharge 13.5 tons of carbon dioxide according to 1 ton of chemical nitrogen fertilizer. , biological nitrogen fertilizer will be able to reduce nearly 60 million tons of carbon emissions.”
According to the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA), the global demand for chemical nitrogen fertilizers will maintain an annual growth rate of 1.2% and will increase to 183 million tons in 2024. In terms of cost, Ma Ruiqiang believes that “the nitrogen fixation track has a market space of more than 70 billion yuan. With the increase of the replacement rate, the cost margin of biological nitrogen fixation will be lower and lower, and the price space will be larger and larger. If biological nitrogen fixation replaces The average price of green nitrogen products per mu of farmland is lower than that of chemical nitrogen fertilizers, and its cost performance will be 300% higher than that of chemical nitrogen fertilizers.”
In terms of business model planning, Ma Ruiqiang told 36Kr, “Green Nitrogen’s strategy is to combine 2B and 2C, and actively cooperate with domestic leading seed companies and compound fertilizer companies, while targeting large farms and small-scale growers.” The development logic is to build the platform first, and then extend the pipeline after the platform is built. In addition to nitrogen-fixing bacteria, Green Nitrogen envisages that it will also promote the research and development of products that dissolve phosphorus and potassium, and resist pests and diseases.
At present, Green Nitrogen Biology is setting up a management and R&D team. Ma Ruiqiang told 36氪 that at this stage, it focuses on recruiting CTO, COO and microbial resource innovation, intelligent manufacturing process, product evaluation, and automation innovation. The four major sections of technical sequence talents.
Frontier Technology Insights
At present, a new generation of high-efficiency biological nitrogen fixation technology is developing rapidly. The multi-bacteria nitrogen fixation technology designs the bacterial network on the basis of revealing the interaction mechanism of the bacterial community, realizes the “division and cooperation” of different bacteria, and improves the overall application performance of the bacterial agent. “The development of the agricultural microbiome is lagging behind that of the gut microbiome. The metabolic compensation, moderate competition and antagonism between different bacterial groups are the theoretical basis for the development of artificial combined inoculants. Green Nitrogen is also deploying related technical and engineering personnel. It is hoped that a combined bacterial agent that can achieve a dynamic balance of nitrogen fixation, phosphorus and potassium removal, and saline-alkali tolerance can be developed.”
The combined bacterial agent also needs to increase the innovation of intelligent fermentation and formulation production process, so that the main effect nitrogen-fixing strain and the auxiliary effect function strain form the best ratio, and realize fertilizer saving, stable production and efficiency in production and application.
The autonomous nitrogen fixation of crops is a research hotspot in the academic world. Lin Min said, “Autonomous nitrogen fixation by plants is very exciting as a future agriculture, but in order to achieve autonomous nitrogen fixation of crops, many ‘evolutionary barriers’ need to be overcome.”
Plant autonomous nitrogen fixation refers to the introduction of an artificial nitrogen fixation gene system into plants to achieve self-reduction of nitrogen and flow to the cell center for metabolism. One of the “evolutionary hurdles” that needs to be overcome is the high reducing activity of nitrogenase, which makes it difficult to maintain activity in an aerobic environment, or even to express correctly. From the point of view of material and energy flow, “although the autonomous nitrogen fixation of plants may also cause crop yield reduction,” therefore, it is still quite far away from industrialization.
36 Krypton noticed that the agricultural economy driven by synthetic biology has gained new vitality, and it is currently a window period for synthetic biology to boost agricultural development. Companies that focus on plant health and plant nutrition, build technology platforms using synthetic biology, and form agricultural technology innovations are worthy of attention.
Investor’s View
Xiangtong, Source Code Capital: Agriculture is a field of investment that we continue to pay attention to. With the support of science and technology and the development of connotative modern agriculture in recent years, the agricultural field is experiencing many opportunities for supply-side changes driven by innovation. Biological nitrogen fixation technology has the opportunity to change the traditional chemical nitrogen fertilizer utilization rate, soil compaction, serious pollution and other problems in the past. It has the opportunity to use innovative technology, which can not only reduce the use of chemical fertilizers, improve crop efficiency, but also greatly reduce carbon emissions, which is in line with the sustainable development of agriculture. need. Source Code Capital is optimistic about the green nitrogen biological team’s ability in the field of biological nitrogen fixation, and hopes to help the development of agricultural science and technology and the implementation of the national dual-carbon strategy.
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