Quorum Bio is deploying the world's first gene-edited phosphorus bio-fertilizer, empowering farmers to increase their profits and reduce their environmental impact. Quorum invented the leading crop microbiome engineering technology and is using it to address farmer pain points across crop nutrition and climate resilience.
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Sudharsan Dwaraknath
Sudharsan Dwaraknath is a social entrepreneur with over a decade of cross-disciplinary research experience. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois and completed postdoctoral work in synthetic biology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Through conversations with smallholder farmers worldwide, he became committed to delivering solutions for vulnerable populations. Dwaraknath is building a company to harness agriculture as a force against climate change, while increasing sustainability and resilience to climate stress.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
The global population will reach 10 billion by mid-century, and the growing demand for food, feed, raw materials, and bioenergy will require a 70 percent increase in agricultural production. Alarmingly, crop yields are being progressively decimated by effects of climate change like drought, saltwater intrusion, and new plant pathogens. The climate crisis is exacerbated further by modern farming practices such as the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and the conversion of forestland to farmland. Therefore, agriculture desperately needs sustainable and rapidly scalable alternative technologies to meet increasing demand amidst a changing climate.
Technology Vision
As the gut microbiome is essential to human health, the plant microbiome is intimately involved in crop performance. Quorum Bio engineers the plant microbiome to enhance the host plant’s uptake of water and nutrients while conferring resistance to climate-related stress. Quorum Bio’s rapidly scalable workflow enables the development of precision crop- and farm-specific microbial solutions in an unmatched technical development timeframe.
Potential for Impact
Quorum Bio’s microbes will replace chemical fertilizers and pesticides and mitigate the conversion of forestland to farmland. This will dramatically reduce agriculture’s emissions—which currently account for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions—and bring an end to the chemical pollution of the land, air, and water. Quorum Bio’s technology can benefit every farm on the planet because it can be applied to any type of plant. While fertilizer prices are soaring, Quorum Bio’s microbes are cheap to manufacture and will enable farmers worldwide across socioeconomic classes to protect their livelihoods despite climate change.
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Quorum Bio