Aquatrols acquires rhizosphere technology from Dr. Andrea Carminati, University of Gottingen (Apr 2)

April 2, 2015 – Aquatrols has announced that it has acquired innovative technology from Dr. Andrea Carminati and Georg-August-University Göttingen to improve the control of soil-plant-water relations.

The commercialization agreement has been successfully negotiated through MBM ScienceBridge GmbH, the fully owned technology transfer partner of the University of Göttingen. Dr. Carminati is the junior professor of soil hydrology in the department of crop sciences at the University of Göttingen. He and his team are conducting groundbreaking research centered on the rhizosphere, the narrow region of soil that is directly influenced by root deposition.

Under a new three-year agreement, Dr. 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. The technology allows for greater influence over the soil-water-plant interactions in this critical region.

“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 resource acquisition for crop productivity,” said Dr. Stan Kostka, Aquatrols’ director of new technology and business development. “Andrea’s groundbreaking discoveries have us very excited for the future. Stay tuned.”

“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 said. “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.”