Aquatrols teams up with German university on rhizosphere research

Aquatrols has made an agreement with Andrea Carminati, Ph.D., and the University of Göttingen (Germany) to acquire its soil-plant-water research.

Carminati is the junior professor of soil hydrology in the department of crop sciences at the university. He and his team are conducting research focused on the rhizosphere, the narrow region of soil directly influenced by root deposition.

Under a new, three-year agreement, Carminati and his team will continue their research on understanding how compounds improve water and nutrient uptake in the rhizosphere, specifically as it relates to the mucigel surrounding plant roots.

“It is exciting to explore the potential impact of our discoveries on the development of new strategies to expand the boundaries for production of more drought tolerant plants,” Carminati says. “This collaboration helps to bring the fundamental research of my group to real-world agricultural applications and we are very excited to discover where this collaboration will bring us.”

The commercialization agreement was negotiated through MBM ScienceBridge GmbH, the fully owned technology transfer partner of the University of Göttingen.

“This research has the potential to change everything we know about how plants behave under abiotic stress conditions. Our work with Dr. Carminati and his team may lead to major breakthroughs in water and resources acquisition for crop productivity,” says Dr. Stan Kostka, Aquatrols’ director of new technology and business development.