The results are in.
The World Food Prize Foundation announced late yesterday that this year’s recipient of their esteemed World Food Prize is Dr. Mariangela Hungria, a microbiologist from São Paulo, Brazil.
Considered the Nobel Prize for food, the World Food Prize is awarded each year to exceptional individuals who the Foundation believes have made enormous contributions to improving global food security, a cause that is the very reason for Grow Further’s existence. Last year, the prize went to two men who were instrumental in creating the famous Svalbard seed vault.
The 2025 World Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Hungria developed dozens of treatments for seeds and soils that have led to major improvements in farm yields. The Foundation says her scientific discoveries and innovations have helped Brazil “become a global agricultural powerhouse.”
”Her products are estimated to have been used across more than 40 million hectares in Brazil, saving farmers up to US$40 billion a year in input costs while avoiding more than 180 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year,” the World Food Prize Foundation stated in their announcement.
According to the selection committee, Dr. Hungria took an early interest in fully understanding the biological processes involved in nitrogen fixation, an essential part of the picture that ensures soils are fertile enough to foster strong plants and crops. Her research zeroed in on ways that beneficial bacteria in soils help to fix nitrogen and release it for healthy plant growth.
By tinkering with how rhizobia, a class of beneficial bacteria, acts with plant roots to give plants nitrogen while receiving energy in return, Dr. Hungria made discoveries that have helped Brazil realize major increases in soybean yields. Today, Brazil is a leading soybean producer and exporter, and Dr. Hungria’s work has helped production to continue rising while the country successfully curtails deforestation.
“When I started out, nobody spoke about biological nitrogen fixation,” Dr. Hungria said in a statement delivered upon her acceptance of the World Food Prize. “But I loved microbiology, I loved basic science, and I had many ideas I wanted to investigate and study.”
She went on to explain that a major motivator for her work is a desire to replace “the use of chemicals with biologicals in agriculture.” Her success with boosting soybean yields is but one of the many of Dr. Hungria’s career accomplishments the World Food Prize Foundation recognizes in explaining their decision to bestow her with the honor and the $500,000 cash prize that comes with it.
”She was also the first to isolate strains of the bacteria Azospirillum brasilense that could improve the uptake of nitrogen and phytohormones,” the Foundation said.
The awarding of the 2025 World Food Prize to Dr. Mariangela Hungria of Brazil was announced yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa. Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa presided over the announcement, along with World Food Prize Foundation President Mashal Husain, Chair of the Board Paul Schickler, and the Foundation’s CEO and former US Secretary of Agriculture and Iowa governor Tom Vilsack.
Foundation President Husain said Hungria demonstrated remarkable innovation in her approach to boosting food security by focusing as much attention on the soils crops are grown in as she did on the crops themselves. “Her pioneering biological research into nitrogen fixation revolutionized soybean farming, making it possible to supplement synthetic nitrogen fertilizers with naturally occurring processes,” Husain said.
”She understood that the answers weren’t just in the lab or the factories,” Husain added. “They were beneath our feet, in the soil.
Grow Further congratulates Dr. Hungria, and is currently funding or considering a number of projects involving nitrogen-fixing legumes and other sustainability solutions.
— Grow Further
Photo credit: A graphic from the World Food Prize Foundation’s Instagram page announcing that Dr. Mariangela Hungria is their 2025 World Food Prize winner. World Food Prize Foundation.