Thinking business with Dr Xuemei Germaine, CEO, MicroGen Biotech. ‘Our vision is to solve the problem of all the stressed land across the globe.’
Dr Xuemei Germaine (left) founded MicroGen Biotech in 2012 as a spin-out from I.T. Carlow. MicroGen Biotech is currently the only company in the world providing tailored or site-specific microbial products for stressed and polluted arable land. This is vital for preventing land abandonment that leads to food shortages.
“The portion of contaminated arable land in China has an addressable market value of $48 billion.”
Farmers will be able to grow more fresh food on arable soil stressed by pollution, using MicroGen’s disruptive technology.
What problem are you solving?
We turn polluted land into arable land using a natural process. The Chinese Government had to move away from old soil remediation techniques such as washing or burning pollutants out of the ground, which was impractical at an economic and environmental level.
“Twenty percent (or 65m hectares) of arable land in China is stressed by pollution, primarily from industry and wastewater contamination.”
Bioremediation as a word may sound too technical, but in layman’s terms, we use these naturally occurring microbes and bacteria, which eat away oil and heavy metals like cadmium or chromium. It’s a waste management technique, and we use site-specific, tailored bacteria to remove or neutralise pollutants such as these from contaminated soil.
It has become a vital clean-tech strategy. Especially when you consider that twenty percent (or 65m hectares) of arable land in China is stressed by pollution, primarily from industry and wastewater contamination.
Why China and why now?
Commercially, China is a huge market. The portion of contaminated arable land there has an addressable market value of $48 billion. Last year this attracted Irish investors and match funding from Enterprise Ireland to the tune of €0.5m. A Chinese company also match funded this, as it understands the
