08/30/2026
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Mariangela Hungria, a 68-year-old Brazilian microbiologist, has won the 2025 World Food Prize after four decades developing bacteria-based treatments that let crops draw nitrogen directly from the air, replacing costly chemical fertilizers across tens of millions of hectares of farmland.
Hungria has worked since 1982 as a researcher at Embrapa, Brazil’s state-run agricultural research corporation, where she developed seed and soil treatments using naturally occurring soil bacteria to fix nitrogen for crops, a breakthrough that proved especially important for soybean cultivation. Her techniques have helped Brazil increase soybean production from around 15 million metric tons in the 1980s to more than 170 million tons today, making the country the world’s largest producer and exporter of the crop. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, her biological seed treatments save Brazilian farmers up to 25 billion dollars annually on input costs.
The World Food Prize Foundation, based in Des Moines, Iowa, announced the honor and its accompanying 500,000 dollar award, making Hungria the first Brazilian woman to receive the prize. “I was always interested in making viable the use of biological materials in commercial agriculture,” she told Reuters. Of the recognition itself, she said, “I still cannot believe it.”
Hungria’s work has also drawn attention from institutions such as the University of Florida and the International Fertilizer Development Center, with whom Embrapa collaborates on the Fertilize 4 Life initiative alongside the USDA. She has said she believes wider adoption of biological nitrogen fixation, particularly on pastureland, could substantially raise Brazil’s agricultural output without further encroaching on the country’s rainforest.
