Turning Tight Timelines into Success: Large-Scale Fermentation of Bradyrhizobium japonicum

Agricultural production is directed by a multitude of natural cycles – from atmospheric and hydrological, to life cycles of various organisms. Such circumstances make timing one of the essential components for achieving successful, high-yielding crop production. With inflexible planting windows and necessity for stable outputs, timely delivery of key ag input materials is a requirement. Any delays in supplying essential products can directly impact yields, farm planning, and farmer’s trust.

This especially applies to microbial products – fermentation takes time, and the final product often has a comparably shorter shelf life to synthetically-produced alternatives. For microbial manufacturers, the ability to deliver under tight timelines is not just important for good customer relationships, but also ensures that the product is delivered at optimum efficiency at the right time.

However, delivering products is not only about speed – it is also about delivering quality at scale. The product needs to yield desired effects consistently and be produced in large enough quantities in order to be relevant in large-scale agricultural operations.

Modern Farming Requires Agility – and Evologic Delivers

Being aware of challenges in microbial manufacturing specific to agriculture and having first-hand experience in solving them, Evologic has developed a manufacturing technology platform that delivers effective, stable and safe microbial products at speed and scale. The most recent project that showcases the agility and robustness of this platform is delivering 12,000 liters of Bradyrhizobium japonicum product in less than 40 days, and to specification.

The Challenge: Delivering Quality Under Extreme Time Constraints

In December 2024, a key agricultural customer requested production and delivery of 12,000 liters of a specialized microbial inoculant based on a Gram-negative bacteria, Bradyrhizobium japonicum. The requirement was split into two batches – first one to be delivered by the third week of January 2025, and the second during the first week of February. This tight timeline was intensified by the Christmas holiday season, leaving only a few operational weeks to execute the entire manufacturing process – from strain establishment to full-scale fermentation, formulation, quality testing, and delivery.

To make it more even more challenging:

There were no pre-validated manufacturing procedures; our team had to develop and implement production methods from scratch.
Product stability had to be established with limited initial data.
Strict quality standards required multiple verification points, including third-party analysis.
Logistical deadlines were non-negotiable – delays beyond 10 working days would void acceptance.

The Solution: Agile Technologies and Smart Planning

How to overcome all these constraints successfully? Having world-class production capacities and highly competitive proprietary technologies certainly helps, but the execution couldn’t be possible without a team of committed, savvy engineers and rigorous planning.

Leveraging deep microbial fermentation expertise and proprietary technologies, our team managed to establish testing protocols and the production process from scratch, scale it up, and deliver 12,000L of a viable product in less than 5 weeks. In more technical terms, this included:

Designing and implementing a four-stage production process, scaling from cryo-stock to full 6,000-liter production batches.
Conducting rigorous in-house quality control testing at each stage, including media sterility, OD600, and CFU/ml enumeration.
Integrated third-party testing to confirm compliance with specifications such as pathogenic strain content and non-target strain exclusion.
Developing stability and efficiency protocols with proactive risk mitigation. This includes fast-tracked process validation ensuring the product meets minimum viability requirements (≥ 2 × 10⁹ CFU/ml), and establishing a multi-stage quality control system to integrate third-party verification before shipment.

This engineering milestone was greatly supported by smart planning both in manufacturing and in the supply chain and logistics operations. Working closely with logistics partners, we streamlined transportation to ensure both batches arrived within contractual timelines – first batch (6,000 L) shipped by January 22nd and the second batch (6,000 L) shipped by February 3rd. All deliveries were completed without deviation from specification or acceptance criteria, showcasing Evologic’s commitment to quality.

This project exemplifies agility, operational excellence, engineering expertise, and responsive collaboration of Evologic’s expert team, as well as the competitiveness of our manufacturing technology. By transforming a challenging request into a palpable solution, we continue to empower agricultural innovation and supply chain reliability for our partners – ensuring that farmers get the tools they need to meet the demands of modern agriculture.

Why Does Bradyrhizobium japonicum Matter Anyway?

Bradyrhizobium japonicum is a Gram-negative, nitrogen-fixing bacterium used in soybean cultivation as a biostimulant. It enhances nitrogen availability through biological nitrogen fixation, and increases plant productivity and yield. By increasing availability of nitrogen in the soil, B. japonicum reduces the need for mineral fertilizer input, and consequently, the associated greenhouse gas emissions and pollution – contributing to a more sustainable soybean production. Due to these benefits, the demand for B. japonicum-based inoculants remains high, with farmers and agricultural companies relying on consistent quality and viability to ensure field performance.