Pivot Bio – Providing sustainable farming solutions through advanced crop nutrition

Agriculture is the largest employer on the earth, as food is the basic necessity of life. However, half of our world's food supply is dependent on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, even if it has serious environmental impacts. Since the fertilizer companies have started manufacturing fertilizers at industrial scale, it has become one of the mains sources of environmental pollution. The fertilizers may give short term yields but have proven to be dangerous for our planet in the long term. The prolonged use of fertilizers like synthetic nitrogen has made the agricultural lands almost barren. It has reduced both plants' natural ability and the helpful ground microbes at growing at their original pace.

The synthetic fertilizers contribute to about 500 ocean dead zones across the globe and decompose into nitrous oxide, which is responsible for about 5 percent of global warming. It also prevents the soil microbes' natural ability to produce nitrogen that nourishes food crops. Farmers are looking for new tools today that can help them reliably feed their nitrogen-hungry crops in a more environmentally sustainable way. Pivot Bio is actively invested in innovating sustainable farming solutions, which help farmers get a good yield but also restricting the harm caused to the nature.

Pivot Bio was formed with an ambition to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with something more sustainable and safer for farmers to use. Besides, it also takes care of the environmental issues. Its co-founders, Karsten Temme and Alvin Tamsir have developed a new crop nutrition solution and built a company to provide other sustainable solutions for farmers to improve crop yields through scientific innovation. They are inspired by the farmers they serve. They believe that sustainable use of earth's resources will help future generations experience nature the same way we did.

The Future Fertilizer solution by pivot Bio

As we know, nitrogen is essential to plants. It's a building block of proteins, DNA, and amino acids. Plants can grow well only when they get the right amount of ammonia harvested by microbes from the nitrogen atmosphere. While our atmosphere has 78% nitrogen, it can't be used directly by the plants. Instead, plants have to rely on microbes to produce nitrogenase, an enzyme that takes nitrogen from the atmosphere and converts it to ammonia. It is the nutrient that plants can take up through the roots and convert it into protein. Pivot Bio fertilizer solution makes nitrogen fixation very easy for the microbes. It boosts microbes' ability to inhale nitrogen gas from the atmosphere and release ammonia to plants. This groundbreaking solution can surely change the way farmers use fertilizers and do farming around the world.

Pivot Bio believes that microbes are the future of fertilizers. As the current fertilizer practices are unsustainable, they are solving the most challenging problem of nitrogen fixation in cereal crops. Pivot Bio's massive R&D in biology, machine learning, and computational modeling have made it possible to reawaken microbes' natural ability to convert nitrogen from the air to meet crops' daily nitrogen needs.

Farmers are already using Pivot Bio's microbes to improve crop yields and reduce fertilizer use for corn crops that provide typical gains of 5.8 bushels per acre on fields that used Pivot Bio's treatments using only synthetic nitrogen.

The Pivot Bio Advantage

Farmers have a very wide set of responisibilities and skillsets. From procuring news seeds, to make the land ready for farming, to safeguard the crops untill the cultivation, it takes a lot of skill and knowledge to do it every year properly. Pivot Bio PROVEN is more than just a reimagining of crop nitrogen; it’s something farmers can rely on to be a more predictable, more productive solution to synthetic nitrogen.

Instead of excess nitrogen that would be carried away in extreme weather, Pivot Bio PROVEN microbes adhere to the roots of the plant, supplying it with nitrogen on a daily basis. This results in both healthier plants, and more predictable and productive yields, weather or not.

The Pivot Bio provides a peace of mind, that the crops will not run out of nitrogen which can hamper yield seriously. The future of farming depends on sustainable fertilizer source, Pivot Bio PROVEN brings this to farmers in the form of nitrogen producing microbes that can satisfy increasing productivity demands while preserving environmental resources. The best way to honor the past is to improve the future. Pivot Bio PROVEN helps ensure the natural resources you rely on remains healthy for generations to come.

Improving Microbial Genetics for Agriculture

The microbes that produce ammonia from nitrogen are still present but have lost their effectiveness because of the prolonged use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers over the decade. Pivot Bio is rediscovering these microbes and their best species to bring the natural phenomenon of nitrogen fixation back to its original form. They find these microbes by choosing through thousands of U.S. soil samples. The best microbes which can form robust colonies and produce a high amount of natural ammonia are only selected. They have pioneered ways to reawaken the microbes' natural ability to produce nitrogenase. The solution can replace the highly dangerous traditional fertilizers, which not only harms these microorganisms but also accounts for global warming and harm to the environment.

Working of the Pivot Bio PROVEN™

The "Pivot Bio PROVEN" is a registered trademark from Pivot Bio. The patented solution is applied at the time of planting. As the seeds sprout, the Pivot Bio PROVEN™ microbes adhere to the roots' epidermis, forming a mutualistic relationship with the plant. The microbes feed off the exudates of the plant and deliver nitrogen daily throughout its growth cycle.

The use of synthetic nitrogen and unpredictable weather can affect crops in adverse ways. The absence of proper nitrogen can result in low yield or sometimes even crop loss. Pivot Bio solves the nutrient absorption issue through its naturally occurring microbes that provide nitrogen to the plants quickly and efficiently through biological nitrogen fixation. This results in more productive and predictable crop yields for farmers without nutrient degradation, leaching, or runoff into waterways.

At Pivot Bio, the Board of Directors bring a wealth of experience and insight - as well as a shared vision for how Pivot Bio's technology can improve agriculture and our world. Their team is on constant research and innovation to bring the world's best academic minds to bring the most advanced sustainable solution that helps the farmers preserve our planet in the long run.

2019 Performance Report

The PivotBio was evaluated in field trials at six land grant universities in 2019. At most locations, Pivot Bio PROVEN performance was assessed across a range of nitrogen rates. At other locations, the focus was to determine the effect of their microbe on above-ground nutrient uptake and eventual nutrient accumulation in the grain. At most locations, yield benefits from Pivot Bio PROVEN occurred within multiple nitrogen rates.

Testing revealed that yield increases occured using nitrogen rates similar to, and slightly below, those used by most farmers. This is an indication that their microbe is still working despite the presence of nitrogen in the soil, unlike many nitrogen-fixing microbes that shut down in the presence of soil nitrogen. These data also suggest that nitrogen rates could be reduced in some environments when Pivot Bio PROVEN is used in conjunction with farmer-applied nitrogen. There are also indications that their microbe is helping corn plants take up more nitrogen that eventually ends up in the grain. According to Pivot Bio, Partnerships with land grant institutions will be expanded in 2020 as they continue to characterize Pivot Bio PROVEN and develop strategies to help farmers reduce their dependence on synthetic nitrogen.

"Through nearly a decade of research, we understand how microbes work in nature before they adapted to heavy fertilizer use. We take that knowledge and enable these naturally-occurring microbes to work as nature intended again," Alvin Tasmir, Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder