Giorgio Rizzo, an MIT postdoc who grew up fascinated by nature in Palermo, Sicily, is developing next-generation sustainable fertilizers that could revolutionize agriculture by reducing its massive environmental impact while helping farmers increase crop yields without compromising soil quality or plant health. Rizzo is creating new fertilizer formulations that can be applied as seed coatings to help plants grow stronger and enhance their resistance to environmental stressors like heat, drought, and prolonged UV radiation. His inspiration struck as an undergraduate when he watched a researcher switch on a UV light over a chromatography column filled with plant chemicals, turning the colors into fluorescent shades of blue, green, red, and pink, making him realize he wanted to separate unknown compounds from rare plants with pharmaceutical properties. The fertilizers he’s developing aim to replace traditional NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) fertilizers, which are fundamental to crop yields but accumulate in soil, harm soil health and microbiomes, and are produced through one of the most energy-consuming and polluting chemical processes in the world.
A major barrier to adopting new fertilizers has always been cost, as farmers rely heavily on each growing season’s output and cannot risk investing in products that may underperform compared to traditional options, but Rizzo’s fertilizers use chitin and chitosan, abundant natural materials that make them far less expensive to produce. He describes MIT as a dynamic and stimulating experience where “you will feel like a small fish in a big ocean, but that is exactly what MIT is: an ocean full of opportunities and challenges that are waiting to be solved.” Looking ahead, Rizzo hopes to shift his professional pathway toward startups or companies focused on agrotechnical improvement where his research can have a direct, tangible impact on everyday life and help solve agricultural issues while supporting farmers’ prosperity.
