'Microneedling' of plants could boost growth and reduce fertilizer waste
newatlas
2026.01.04
If you’re a gardener – and definitely if you’re a farmer – you want to spend less on fertilizer but while growing more food. Well, it’s time to send your thank-you basket of fruits and vegetables to researchers at the National University of Singapore, because they’ve created a magic wand for doing just that. Well, actually, a magic needle.
In their Advanced Functional Materials paper “Microneedle-Based Biofertilizer Delivery Improves Plant Growth Through Microbiome Engineering,” Andy Tay and colleagues explore the twin sources for their innovation: microbes in humans, and injections for humans.
“Inspired by how microbes can migrate within the human body,” says Prof. Tay, who led the work as Principal Investigator at NUS’s Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), “we hypothesized that by delivering beneficial microbes directly into the plant’s tissues, like a leaf or stem, they could travel to the roots and still perform their function, but much more effectively and be less vulnerable to soil conditions.”
If you’re a gardener – and definitely if you’re a farmer – you want to spend less on fertilizer but while growing more food. Well, it’s time to send your thank-you basket of fruits and vegetables to researchers at the National University of Singapore, because they’ve created a magic wand for doing just that. Well, actually, a magic needle.
In their Advanced Functional Materials paper “Microneedle-Based Biofertilizer Delivery Improves Plant Growth Through Microbiome Engineering,” Andy Tay and colleagues explore the twin sources for their innovation: microbes in humans, and injections for humans.
“Inspired by how microbes can migrate within the human body,” says Prof. Tay, who led the work as Principal Investigator at NUS’s Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), “we hypothesized that by delivering beneficial microbes directly into the plant’s tissues, like a leaf or stem, they could travel to the roots and still perform their function, but much more effectively and be less vulnerable to soil conditions.”
Read more here.