Jason McNamee, Chief Product Officer and Senior Bio-Geoscientist at Lucent BioSciences, explains how Soileos binds micronutrients to agricultural cellulose co-products so a farm's own soil microbiome delivers them to the crop instead of losing them to leaching or soil chemistry. The conversation traces the idea back to his deep-sea ocean research, walks through field trial results across more than 50 sites, and lays out where the underlying science is headed next.
Jason McNamee spent his early career in geotechnical consulting and deep-sea ocean research before bringing an unlikely insight back to agriculture: the same chemistry that limits plankton blooms in the open ocean also limits what a farm's soil microbiome can do with a standard fertilizer program.
Traditional salt-based fertilizers, sulfates and chlorides, work against the soil's own biology. They can leach into groundwater or tie up in soil chemistry before a plant ever uses them, and they select against the microbes that would otherwise be feeding the crop. Lucent BioSciences built Soileos to work with that biology instead of around it.
What's Inside
- How Soileos binds micronutrients like zinc, iron, and manganese to pea and lentil cellulose fiber so soil microbes deliver them to plant roots on a schedule that matches crop demand
- The deep-sea plankton research that led to the discovery, and why free micronutrients behave differently in salt water than farmers might expect
- Why traditional salt-based fertilizers can work against the soil microbiome instead of feeding it
- Field trial results: 50 to 75 trials showing 5 to 12 percent yield gains on broadacre crops, with double-digit gains on vegetables
- What tissue testing across more than 5,000 samples showed about nutrient density and uptake of nutrients the farm never applied
- Where the research goes next: mesonutrients and a carbon-based carrier for nitrogen
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