Life on the edge: Could extremophiles feed the world?

The global food system is straining. Scorching droughts, volatile rainfall and soil erosion are the grim realities of 21st century agriculture. 

Even easy access to fertiliser is no longer a given. Modern farming inputs depend on complex global supply chains. Yet geopolitical tensions are making them more fragile than ever. 

Farmers the world over are searching for new tools. Some are reaching for extremophiles – death-defying organisms that can survive under inhospitable conditions. 

Seed treatments with a difference

Argentinian biotech startup Puna Bio sells agricultural seed treatments with a difference. Their formulations contain bacteria that live in the soil and help crops thrive. 

Founded in 2020, the company selects, preserves, and deploys non-GMO extremophiles bacteria sourced from La Puna, the highest, driest desert in the world. 

Puna’s microbes belong to a class known as xerophiles – extremophiles specifically adapted to arid, water-limited habitats. 

Puna is now at the commercial forefront of ag biotech that draws on extremophiles to boost crop resilience and yields. When its products are applied to seeds, the microbes they contain will colonise plant roots as they grow. The extremophile bacteria boosts antioxidant production, plant nutrient uptake, and encourage the presence of beneficial soil fungi.

What is important is that Puna’s technology does not add nutrients to soil. Instead, they make crops more efficient at absorbing nutrients that are already in the ground, but which plants would not be able to use on their own. In short, they make plants more resource efficient. 

Choice microbes

Microbes are so good at amping up plant productivity because this is precisely what they do in natural environments. 

Everywhere you go, bacteria are breaking down organic matter, making the nutrients inside them more usable for the surrounding flora and fauna. Extremophiles are just those microorganisms adapted to keep working like this even under hostile environmental conditions. 

Not all extremophiles have the same effects on soil health, however. Puna Bio accounts for this, selecting different microorganisms to fit the needs of different crops. 

Its flagship product is Kunza Soja, a seed treatment that supports higher yields by boosting the plant’s tolerance to stressors. Stressors are anything weaken crops, like drought or heavy rain. 

Their Kanzama seed inoculant is formulated wheat. Again, its bacteria attaches to the root of the new plant and colonises its interior. Puna Bio says their field trials have shown an 11% yield increase with the product. 

An underground support network

Puna’s products take advantage of a simple biological fact: crop productivity depends on the work of soil microorganisms.

Whether fungi, bacteria, or algae, underground microbes are constantly performing invisible work that enables crops to keep producing fruit, veg, and other products. Their complexity, type, and density in an area can make the difference between highly fertile cropland and poor quality scrubland.

Puna’s microbes are capable of some extraordinary feats. One of them is the ability to get nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form that a plant can use. This is called nitrogen fixing.

Nitrogen is the most important plant nutrient and all agricultural yields are dependent on it. 

Yet making plant-ready nitrogen out of thin air is something which only a few plants can do on their own. 

Modern agriculture helps crops obtain the nutrients they need by applying synthetic nitrogen. The substance can only be made using natural gas – a fossil fuel – and huge amounts of energy. Indiscriminate synthetic nitrogen use has also created a huge ecological crisis, with excess nitrogen fertiliser washing off into fields and polluting waterways. 

Using nitrogen-fixing microbes instead of synthetic nitrogen addresses fundamental problems of modern agriculture. The technology has the capacity to deliver just the right amount of nutrients to crops without the water pollution or the fossil-heavy manufacturing process.

Extremophiles take the heat

Microbes do so much to keep our crops alive. Unfortunately, climate change is bad news for this underground support system. Volatile weather conditions disrupt the functioning of many soil microbes. When the underground support network fails, plants succumb to disease and lower yields. 

This is not an issue that conventional soil treatments can solve. Many seed and soil treatments on the market contain beneficial microbes but normal bacteria stop functioning normally once extreme weather takes hold. 

Salty water, extreme high and low temperatures, extreme acid or alkaline locations all prevent ordinary soil microbes from doing the work that keeps crops healthy. 

Only extremophile bacteria can continue their crop-supporting work through harsh conditions. 

A natural pesticide

Aside from increasing nutrient uptake, extremophiles can also act as biobased pesticides and insecticides for crops.

Certain soil microorganisms can synthesise antimicrobial compounds that offer natural ways to combat pests. 

These microbes can even encourage diverse assemblages of other organisms to proliferate in the soil around them. These microbial complexes can themselves produce disease–supressing chemicals that benefit crops. 

The huge genetic diversity of extremophiles means that there are likely unstudied species out there that produce the right chemical cocktails for all kinds of crop diseases. 

Mastering the use of extremophiles to combat pests and disease would be a huge boost for sustainable agriculture. It would allow farms to avoid harsh biocontrol agents which are common in modern agriculture but which harm wildlife and ecosystems. 

Anti-freeze machines

Puna Bio products are already in use in Latin America. Now, their sights are set on expansion. In 2025, the company announced they would be expanding to the African market via their partnership with the Gates Foundation. 

In both of Puna Bio’s target markets, heat and drought are key environmental factors that limit yields. Yet certain extremophiles could also boost food production in cold climates. 

Cold temperatures can damage crop yield by rendering essential soil microbes less active. 

When the mercury lowers, the bacteria stop producing enzymes that help decompose organic matter and boost overall soil quality. 

Cold temperatures can also damage the ability of some beneficial soil bacteria strains to make phosphorus in the soil soluble – in other words, available for plants to use. 

This means that in colder conditions, plants may find it a lot harder to take up the essential nutrient from the ground. 

This is where cold-loving extremophiles can help. Certain soil bacteria can tolerate cold temperatures by manufacturing their own antifreeze protein, which helps them to survive and grow in the cold by regulating the way ice crystals form.  

One study has shown how bacteria in the groups Bacillus, Desemzia, Exiguobacterium, Jeotgalicoccus, Lysinibacillus, Paenibacillus, Planococcus, Pontibacillus, Sinobaca, Sporosarcina, Staphylococcus, and Virgibacillus are all capable of producing soil-benefiting enzymes even at lows of four degrees celsius. 

With climate change poised to thaw northern regions and make them more hospitable to agriculture, cold-adapted extremophiles could play a part in improving formerly uncultivated topsoils. 

Natural cycles disrupted

Humans perfected its agricultural tools and know-how during a period of relatively stable temperatures in earth history – the goldilocks era known as the Holocene. 

Now, all bets are off. As we enter a new climate regime, humans will have to adapt quicker than they ever have to an increasingly violent set of climatic conditions. 

High-tech interventions like synthetic pesticides and agricultural robots are not enough to comfortably feed a population of 8 billion. 

Agricultural systems must also address problems at their root. The food crisis is an ecological crisis: it stems from the way we have fundamentally disrupted natural cycles in soil, nutrients, and water. 

Restoring healthy top-soils will therefore be a fundamental part of refitting agriculture for the century of climate change. So will saving on precious resources like freshwater. 

Extremophiles can help on both fronts: improving soil quality while limiting freshwater demand from agriculture, especially in dry climates. 

A new world

Scientists agree that extremophile bacteria can offer one way to revamp global agricultural systems in the face of climate change. 

Fine-tuning soil microbial assemblages is a more sustainable way of supporting crop growth under extreme conditions. Extremophile biotech can also turn poor quality soils into cultivable land, expanding the area of land that can be used for food production. Crucially, they open a pathway beyond synthetic fertilisers, a key driver of pollution. 

The use of extremophilic fungi and other microorganisms in farming is still an emerging field. 

Scientists are investigating many areas of extremophile agetch, including the precise molecular mechanisms behind how certain bacteria help plants under hostile conditions. 

Horizontal gene transfer is an ongoing area of research. The next step of extremophile agetch could be extracting stress-resilient genes from bacteria and inserting them into the crop plants, paving the way towards more climate-resilient grains and pulses. 

As extreme weather and geopolitical tension combine to make food production harder, biobased agriculture is entering the spotlight. Extremophile biotech will be only one in a suite of biological tools that farming will turn to in the century of climate change. 

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