Fungal innovation could help save global food supply from climate change

Our world is sitting on a time bomb.

According to a United Nations report, climate change is poised to decimate the global food supply, with agricultural production expected to decline as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century. Meanwhile, the world population will only increase, almost certainly driving up demand for these crops by as much as 14 percent every decade. That means food prices will soar, communities plagued by hunger will go even hungrier, and, many experts fear, countries will fight for food, just as they have for oil.

The good news is unorthodox companies like Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies are working to reverse this harrowing trend. The Seattle startup, founded in 2008, has developed an organic seed treatment it calls BioEnsure that allows agricultural crops like rice and corn to withstand severe droughts and extreme temperatures. It’s based on fungi that company CEO Dr. Rusty Rodriguez and his wife, Dr. Regina Redman, discovered some 20 years ago, that enables plants to grow in extreme heat.