Three years ago, startup Lucent BioSciences was producing one kilogram a day of its novel micronutrient fertilizer Soileos — drawn from crop byproduct like pea or lentil hulls. Once a recently announced manufacturing plant in Rosetown, Sask., goes online, it will be churning out upwards of 6,500 tonnes a year.
The $19-million project, supported by Protein Industries Canada (PIC) and industry partners — NuWave Research, IN10T and Aberhart Ag Solutions — is a joint venture between the former startup and pulse-processing giant AGT Foods. It will operate as AGT Soileos. The project was announced May 26.
Why it matters: Canadian producers may soon see a novel micronutrient fertilizer more readily available.
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“This project really showcases the virtuous cycle of plant processing by taking a co-product of food processing and having it recreated into a new product that goes back into the soil to support another cycle of crop production that will, again, be processed into healthy foods for Canadians,” CEO of Protein Industries Canada, Bill Greuel, said.
Speaking at the project reveal, Canadian Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau pointed current gaps in the fertilizer market due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and pegged Soileos for its promise as a sustainable fertilizer. The federal government has previously taken heat from farmers on the topic of fertilizer emissions reduction.
Development
Lucent CEO Michael Riedijk called the conventional fertilizer market, “ripe for disruption,” pointing to a reliance on older technology.
Soileos was based on a “ground-up” philosophy, he said, pointing to purported benefits for soil health, nutrient density uptake, claims on carbon sequestration and lack of mobility for leaching.
“Over the course of several years, we invented a new type of fertilizer by replacing synthetic and salt-based chemicals with cellulose fibre. In essence, we invented a process to bind micronutrients and crop nutrition to cellulose fibre and use that cellulose fibre as a feedstock for the soil microbiome,” Riedijk said.
The project attracted the attention of AGT Foods, which joined on as an early partner with the startup.
“We were very intrigued by the concept,” Murad Al-Katib, founder and CEO of AGT Foods said. “Because as a value-added processor in agriculture, people talk so much about protein and the things that we’re doing, but really it’s about the co-products that we all have to deal with.”
Soileos, he noted, is all about monetizing those co-products.
After piloting production in 2019, Lucent and AGT Foods took Soileos for field tests in 2020 and 2021.
“Initial field trials of Soileos on broad-acre crops such as durum, lentils and peas demonstrated how Soileos transports zinc, manganese, and iron to plants – leading to improved protein content, yields and soil health, while increasing returns for farmers, minimizing environmental impacts, and bringing value to low-value byproducts,” a May 26 release read.
The consortium of ag companies now hopes to improve the efficiency of manufacturing as they scale up production of the product.
