A Brazilian researcher who contributed to the nation’s grain boom has won the World Food Prize

Mariangela Hungria, a Brazilian microbiologist whose work has significantly increased grain output in the nation, was selected the 2025 World Food Prize Laureate on Tuesday, according to the Iowa-based foundation that administers the award.

At Brazil’s state-run agricultural center Embrapa, where she has worked as a researcher for over 40 years, Hungria focuses on developing seeds and soil treatments that allow plants to obtain nutrients from soil bacteria—a crucial advancement for soybean harvests.

Brazil is now the world’s greatest producer and exporter of soybeans, having increased its output from about 15 million metric tons in the 1980s to over 170 million tons today thanks to her efforts.

“I was always interested in making viable the use of biological materials in commercial agriculture,” Hungria said to Reuters.

According to her, the plant needs a lot of nitrogen to develop well, but using chemical fertilizers that include nitrogen was costly for Brazilian farmers and resulted in a significant reliance on fertilizers from outside the nation.

Hungria discovered a method to inoculate Brazilian soybean seedlings with strains of a soil bacterium called rhizobia. The strains increased the soy plants’ ability to take in nitrogen from the soil, which accelerated their growth.

Over 40 million hectares of Brazil’s approximately 48 million hectares of soy crops now use the treatment, which has now expanded widely.

In addition, Hungria created additional biological solutions, such as employing Azospirillum brasilense bacterial strains to increase the size of maize and other crops’ roots so the plants could reach farther for nutrients or humidity.

In recent years, the use of biological products in agriculture has rapidly increased as consumers’ demands for food produced with less chemicals have expanded.

Being designated a Laureate will earn the researcher $500,000. American agronomist Norman E. Borlaug, who devised ways to boost agricultural output, established the World Food Prize.