{"id":182392,"date":"2025-07-23T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/netzeronitrogen-wants-bacteria-to-replace-synthetic-fertilizer-on-farm-fields-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T11:00:00","slug":"netzeronitrogen-wants-bacteria-to-replace-synthetic-fertilizer-on-farm-fields-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/netzeronitrogen-wants-bacteria-to-replace-synthetic-fertilizer-on-farm-fields-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"NetZeroNitrogen wants bacteria to replace synthetic fertilizer on farm fields | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Synthetic fertilizer is a modern wonder, helping to feed billions of people, but it\u2019s not without its costs. Fertilizer runoff from farm fields has led to dead zones<\/a> in oceans around the world, where low oxygen levels have starved normally teeming coastal waters of life itself.<\/p>\n

Eliminating synthetic fertilizers is a tall order, but one startup thinks that its bacteria can eliminate up to half of it, all while undercutting fertilizer on cost.<\/p>\n

NetZeroNitrogen<\/a> has developed a suite of bacterial strains that is applied directly to the seed and allows the plant to get nitrogen from the atmosphere instead of chemicals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a precision sniper approach,\u201d Justin Hughes, co-founder and CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, told TechCrunch. \u201cIn contrast to fertilizer, where you spread it all over the field and effectively hope some hits the target, a kind of shotgun approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup recently raised a $6.6 million seed round led by World Fund and Azolla Ventures, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

NetZeroNitrogen\u2019s bacteria are the product of over a decade of research on the part of Gary Devine, who has been studying naturally occurring nitrogen-fixing strains. Hughes pointed out that the company\u2019s bacteria aren\u2019t genetically modified.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not on any particular moral high ground about that. It just means the regulatory pathway is a lot easier,\u201d he said. \u201cIt opens you up to organic markets as well.\u201d Once the plant dies, the bacteria dies with it.<\/p>\n

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Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The company plans to roll out its first product for rice. It\u2019s partially a marriage of convenience: to apply the bacterial strains, it\u2019s currently easiest to dunk seeds in water containing them. Rice just so happens to be soaked before planting. \u201cYou just mix it in at that point and you\u2019re done,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n

Because the company can use large fermenters to grow its strains, it can make its bacterial amendment for less than an equivalent amount of synthetic fertilizer, Hughes said. \u201cThe costs of production of biomanufacturing are far, far lower than the Haber-Bosch process, especially once you start to scale up,\u201d he said, referring to the process widely used to make fertilizer.<\/p>\n

The goal, Hughes added, is to sell NetZeroNitrogen\u2019s bacteria to farmers for at least $50 per hectare less than they spend on synthetic fertilizers. In regions like Southeast Asia, that could mean a 30% to 40% discount, he said.<\/p>\n

For now, synthetic fertilizer won\u2019t be disappearing. \u201cUnfortunately, we can\u2019t quite solve 100% of the problem yet,\u201d Hughes said. \u201cBut of the proportion that we can solve, it\u2019s effectively 100% efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Synthetic fertilizer is a modern wonder, helping to feed billions of people, but it\u2019s not without its costs. Fertilizer runoff from farm fields has led to dead zones in oceans around the world, where low oxygen levels have starved normally teeming coastal waters of life itself. Eliminating synthetic fertilizers is a tall order, but one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-182392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}