World Food Prize goes to Brazilian whose work boosts crop yields yet cuts CO2 emissions
Donnelle Eller- Brazilian microbiologist Mariangela Hungria is the winner of the 2025 World Food Prize for her work with biological seed and soil treatments.
- Hungria's research enables crops to utilize soil bacteria for nutrients, increasing yields and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.
- The World Food Prize Foundation made the announcement in Des Moines, marking the first time in 25 years the event wasn't held in Washington, D.C.
Brazilian microbiologist Mariangela Hungria, whose work boosts crop yields while slashing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting water pollution, is this year’s winner of the $500,000 World Food Prize.
Hungria’s biological seed and soil treatments enable wheat, corn and other major crops, including soybeans — Brazil’s top agricultural export — to source nutrients through soil bacteria, significantly increasing yields while reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer.
The Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation announced Hungria as this year's winner on Tuesday, May 13. She'll officially receive the award, often referred to as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, in a ceremony at the Iowa Capitol on Oct 23. It will be the culmination of a three-day international gathering that annually draws world leaders in fields including science. nutrition, philanthropy and, of course, agriculture.
The World Food Prize Foundation announced Hungria’s award at its Des Moines headquarters, the first time in 25 years the announcement — usually made in Washington, D.C — was held in Iowa. Gov. Kim Reynolds presided over the event, along with the foundation’s CEO, Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who assumed leadership of the organization in March after serving as President Joe Biden's secretary of agriculture. Vilsack, who replaced the retiring Terry Branstad, another former Iowa governor, as World Food Prize head, was ag secretary during the Obama administration, as well.
Also present at Tuesday's announcement were World Food Prize President Mashal Husain and board chair Paul Schickler, retired president of Dupont Pioneer, the Johnston seed giant now known as Corteva Agriscience. Hungria did not attend in person, but is expected in Des Moines in October.
Hungria: 'I believed in what I was doing and persevered'
As a young mother of two children, including one with special needs, Hungria rose to become a celebrated researcher, receiving Brazil’s highest honor in agriculture, the Frederico de Menezes Veiga award, after overcoming skepticism that she could earn advanced degrees in a male-dominated field.
“I can’t quite believe I am now receiving the World Food Prize,” Hungria, 67, said in a statement. "Many people questioned me for being a woman, a mother and working with agriculture and biologicals in agriculture.
“But I believed in what I was doing and persevered,” said Hungria, who was credited her grandmother, a public school teacher, with motivating her to study science. “I always believed that it is possible to achieve high yields necessary to mitigate world hunger, but in a sustainable way, preserving the planet.”
As an industrial pioneer and mother, Hungria is an “inspiring example” for women researchers who seek to embrace both roles, Reynolds said in a statement. She said Hungria's discoveries and developments helped launch Brazil as a "global breadbasket,” and that she is emblematic of World Food Prize recipients "whose courage and innovation” have transformed the world.
Husain said Hungria, the 10th woman to receive the World Food Prize, is "a scientist, a microbiologist, a mentor, a mother and a global changemaker. Like Dr. Borlaug, she saw a problem and found a new way to solve it.
"Where Dr. Borlaug saw hunger and worked to develop crops that could feed the world, she saw a different kind of challenge — one buried beneath the soil — and forged a new path to nourish the earth and its people," Husain said.
Over Hungria’s 40-year career with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa, the country’s soybean production increased from 15 million tons in 1979 to an anticipated 173 million tons in the coming harvest, the World Food Prize Foundation said.
Hungria’s products have been used across more than 98 million acres of croplands in Brazil, saving farmers up to $25 billion annually and avoiding about 230 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions associated with synthetic fertilizers, the foundation said.
Under the mentorship of the late Johanna Döbereiner, an agricultural researcher who helped establish Brazil as the world's leading soybean producer, Hungria was an early proponent of biological nitrogen fixation, the process in which crops form a mutually beneficial association with soil bacteria that captures nitrogen from the air and makes it available to the plants.
At the outset of her career, little research existed on microbiology as a solution for soil fertility, the foundation said. Hungria began examining rhizobia, a type of bacteria that interacts with the roots of legume plants to provide nitrogen. She found that applying this strain to soybeans every year could increase yields by up to 8% without the use of chemical fertilizers.
Later, Hungria was the first to release commercial strains of a bacterium, called Azospirillum brasilense, that could improve the uptake of nitrogen and the release of phytohormones, which stimulate plant growth.
With phytohormones, “the roots grow a lot,” three times more than without the bacteria, Hungria told the Des Moines Register.
“If you have more roots, the uptake of water and nutrients is three times” greater and less fertilizer is lost, reducing water pollution, she said.
Her research showed that combining and applying both A. brasilense and rhizobia could double the yield in common beans and soybeans, the foundation said. U.S. officials have shown interest in the research, Hungria said, but efforts have been disrupted by changes in Washington leadership.
Schickler, the World Food Prize board chair and former Dupont Pioneer president, who now works with agricultural startups, said it's "quite amazing to see the science going into microbiology."
It's "a testament to this year's award winner that she's been able to advance this, to innovate it and continued to spread it throughout the world for the last 40 years," Schickler said. "Clearly, she's ahead of her time. And now it's one of the fastest-growing innovations that is going to serve agriculture now and well into the future."
Hungria, also a professor at the State University of Londrina in Brazil's soybean-producing Paraná state, is now applying her research to restoring degraded pastureland. She has developed the first microbial inoculant for grass pastures, resulting in a 22% increase in biomass to support more and better food for cattle.
“When I started out, nobody spoke about biological nitrogen fixation or other microbial contributions,” Hungria said. “But I loved microbiology, I loved basic science, and I had many ideas I wanted to investigate and study.
“Replacing the use of chemicals with biologicals in agriculture has been the fight of my life,” she said. “I'm really proud of making a contribution towards producing food while decreasing the environmental impact. The goal was to increase yield with the least possible use of chemicals, and we achieved this through more biologicals.”
Winner names World Food Prize founder Norman Borlaug as inspiration
Hungria overcame prejudices against women and young mothers in academia to be named one of the 100 most powerful women in agriculture in Brazil by Forbes in 2021. She said she was inspired by Norman Borlaug, the Iowa native who founded the World Food Prize in 1986.
Borlaug, who died in 2009, received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for research that led to the creation of drought-resistant, high-yielding wheat varieties. He is credited as the "father of the Green Revolution," who saved a billion people from hunger.
Borlaug created the World Food Prize to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to improving the quality and quantity of food throughout the world.
“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,” Hungria said.
The author of more than 500 papers, book chapters and other publications, Hungria produced the first Portuguese-language manual for soil microbiology methods adapted to the tropics. She has been listed in the top 2% of agricultural scientists by Stanford University since 2020.
Hungria told the Register she was thrilled that the prize would give her a global platform to talk about how beneficial soil bacteria can enable crops to better capture nutrients. But when she learned it also came with $500,000, she said, she was astounded.
She said the recognition seemed “improbable” after a lifetime running into hurdles. She plans to use the money to set up associations that help women in agricultural science, communications and those with special needs succeed.
“I hope that this will help also many women that are called improbable, that they can win,” she said.
(This story was edited to add new information and photos.)
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com.