Brazilian scientist Mariangela Hungria has won the 2025 World Food Prize for her pioneering work in reducing the use of chemical fertilisers and developing biological seed and soil treatments to boost crop yields and nutrition.
Hungria, a microbiologist from São Paulo, was awarded the $500,000 prize on May 13, 2025 by the World Food Prize Foundation. Over a four-decade career with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), she developed dozens of biological treatments that enabled crops to absorb nutrients from soil bacteria—enhancing the productivity of wheat, maize, rice, beans and especially soybeans, now Brazil’s top agricultural export.
“Over her 40-year career with the Embrapa, national soybean production increased from 15 million tonnes in 1979 to an anticipated 173 million tonnes in the coming harvest,” the foundation said in a statement.
Brazilian farmers were estimated to have saved up to $40 billion annually in input costs due to the technologies Hungria developed. Her work focused on biological nitrogen fixation, a natural process in which naturally occurring microorganisms convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms plant roots can absorb from soil, reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers.
Nitrogen is key for plant growth and Hungria harnessed bacteria and other microorganisms to supply it naturally. Through a process known as biological nitrogen fixation, crops form a mutually beneficial relationship with soil bacteria that provide them with nitrogen. This approach not only reduced the environmental impact of agriculture but also lessened farmers' dependence on chemical fertilisers.
Hungria, in a statement, said she was inspired by Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution and founder of the World Food Prize. “I like to say that he made the Green Revolution possible and we had this great opportunity to start a ‘Micro Green Revolution’ — a Green Revolution, but with microorganisms,” she added.
She began her research by studying rhizobia, a group of bacteria that form symbiotic relationships with legume roots. Her findings showed that annual inoculation of soybeans with selected strains of rhizobia could increase yields by up to 8 per cent compared to synthetic fertiliser use.
Hungria, who also taught at the State University of Paraná and the Federal University of Technology of Paraná, led the development of more than 30 microbial technologies at Embrapa Soja, Brazil’s national soybean research centre. These included microbial inoculants, or products containing beneficial bacteria applied to seeds or soil, to improve the productivity of soybeans, beans, maize, wheat, rice and pasture grasses.
“She was also the first to isolate strains of the bacterium Azospirillum brasilense that could improve the uptake of nitrogen and phytohormones. Her research showed that combining and applying both A brasilense and rhizobia could double the yield increase in common beans and soybeans,” the foundation said.
More than 70 million doses of these combined inoculants were sold and applied across roughly 15 million hectares of Brazilian farmland each year.
Hungria is now applying her research to restoring degraded pastureland. She has developed the first microbial inoculant for grass pastures, resulting in a 22 per cent increase in biomass and improved cattle forage.