News — The is pleased to announce that (TFI) has joined the organization as a sponsoring partner.
The Phytobiomes Alliance is an international, nonprofit consortium of academic institutions, private companies, and government agencies. The Alliance facilitates and coordinates international efforts toward expanding phytobiomes research to accelerate the sustainable production of food, feed, and fiber for food security.
The term “Phytobiome” refers to a plant growing within a specific environment, or biome; it includes the plant itself, and all micro- and macro-organisms living in, on, or around the plant—such as microbes, animals, insects, and other plants—as well as the environment, which includes soil, air, water, weather, and climate.
As a trade association, TFI is the leading voice of the fertilizer industry in the US and a consistent source of trusted information and data, while also being a driver of industry initiatives in safety and environmental stewardship. TFI also represents the US fertilizer industry before the Congress and federal regulatory agencies, acting as an advocate for fair regulation and legislation.
“Properly managed fertilizers support cropping systems that provide economic, social and environmental benefits. On the other hand, poorly managed nutrient applications can decrease profitability and increase nutrient losses, potentially degrading water and air,” explained Sally Flis, TFI Director of Agronomy. “Understanding how fertilizers behave in the phytobiome is a component of making the right fertilizer source, rate, timing, and placement decisions in each field.”
Sally Flis will represent TFI in the Alliance Coordinating Committee. This Committee identifies research, resource and technology gaps, establishes priorities, and develops strategic plans to achieve Alliance goals.
“The Fertilizer Institute brings another dimension to the Alliance and our efforts to move agricultural science towards a holistic systems-based, phytobiomes approach,” said Kellye Eversole, the Alliance Executive Director. “Their expertise and efforts aimed at helping growers manage nutrient applications more effectively and sustainably will help us advance knowledge of the critical interactions between nutrients, soil, crops/crop varieties, and microbes, thereby enabling sustainable and profitable crop production.”
Over the next decades, the United Nations predicts that the world population will grow by 83 million every year, to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. Producing enough food for this growing population – in a sustainable way, while preserving biodiversity and natural resources – requires a major paradigm shift in agricultural production. By establishing a foundation of knowledge on how phytobiome components interact and affect each other, the Phytobiomes Alliance aims at addressing these challenges.
About the Phytobiomes Alliance
The Phytobiomes Alliance is an international, nonprofit alliance of industry, academic, and governmental partners created in 2016. The goal of the Alliance is to understand, predict and control emergent phenotypes for sustainable production of food, feed and fiber on any given farm. The Phytobiomes Alliance is sponsored by Bayer CropScience, Eversole Associates, The Climate Corporation, INRA, Novozymes, Colorado State University, Evogene, Indigo, IRD, NewLeaf Symbiotics, the Noble Research Institute, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, The Fertilizer Institute, the University of Maryland, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, the American Phytopathological Society, BioConsortia, Prime Discoveries, the Austrian Institute of Technology, and Karyosoft.
About The Fertilizer Institute
The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) is the leading voice of the nation’s fertilizer industry. Tracing its roots back to 1883, TFI’s membership includes fertilizer producers, wholesalers, retailers and trading firms. TFI’s full-time staff, based in Washington, D.C., serves its members through legislative, educational, technical, economic information and public communication programs. Find more information about TFI online at and follow us on Twitter at . Learn more about TFI’s nutrient stewardship initiatives at and on Twitter at .
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