04 November 2026, Monheim am Rhein, DE: Bayer has secured a commercial license for gene-editing technology developed at the University of California, Davis, that is designed to let corn, wheat and rice recruit nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria the way legumes such as soybeans already do, a move the company says could eventually reduce grain crops’ dependence on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
Corn, wheat and rice together supply nearly half the world’s daily calories but, unlike soybeans and other legumes, cannot naturally convert nitrogen from the air into a form they can use. The licensed technology edits the plant’s genome so its roots can form a partnership with soil bacteria that perform that conversion instead. In research from a University of California, Davis laboratory published in Plant Biotechnology Journal, scientists used CRISPR gene editing to prompt wheat plants to release more of a compound called apigenin through their roots, which in turn attracted nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria.
Matthias Berninger, Bayer’s head of public affairs and sustainability, called the approach “one of the holy grails” in agricultural science. “It is a really big deal,” he said, while also acknowledging that “it could ultimately turn out not to work as intended.” Berninger said fertilizer is by far the largest input cost for farmers, underscoring the commercial case for the research even as he cautioned that the science remains unproven outside a controlled setting.
Early stage, with a second approach as backup
The concept has so far been demonstrated only in wheat grown in a greenhouse. Bayer’s next step is testing the technology under real field conditions, and the company does not expect any resulting product to reach the market before the next decade.
Bayer is pursuing a second, parallel approach to the same problem. In October, the company partnered with Switch Bioworks, a Stanford University spinout that engineers nitrogen-fixing microbes that live around plant roots rather than editing the crop’s own genome. The two approaches target the same outcome, reduced reliance on synthetic nitrogen, through different scientific paths, reflecting the uncertainty still surrounding which method, if either, will prove commercially viable.
The push comes against a backdrop of global fertilizer market disruption. The global urea market is valued at roughly $85 billion, and prices have risen sharply in recent periods amid supply disruptions tied to the conflict involving Iran. The European Union still sources nearly a quarter of its urea imports from Russia, a dependency that has added urgency to efforts by companies and governments to find alternatives to imported synthetic fertilizer.
Regulatory conditions in Europe have also shifted in ways that could eventually help bring such technology to market. European Union lawmakers this year backed a new framework for gene-edited plants that eases some of the restrictions previously applied to crops developed using techniques like CRISPR, removing what had been one of the larger regulatory hurdles facing gene-edited grain varieties in the bloc.
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