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TS-201 Boosts Corn Yield

46:53 recording · AUTO · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

Two papers show microbes can protect corn from rootworm and blunt human peanut allergies.

  1. A microbe can make corn roots smell wrongTS201 primes the plant to emit methyl anthralate, and the rootworm larva "literally turns around and wiggles away from the roots that have been treated with TS-201."
  2. Field scale is what makes it credibleSeven years of small plots across 22 locations and 81 on-farm sites in eight states, for a two to 3% yield gain in a margin business.
  3. Peanut allergy severity tracks the microbes you carryHumans lack enzymes to digest ARAH1 and ARAH2; children with little Rothia in their saliva were the most sensitive, those with none of the allergy had the most.
Executive Summary AI
  • Michael Schmidt opens TWIM 353, recorded April 2nd, 2026, with a snippet on "Harnessing Microbes for Crop Production. TS-201 Enhances Maize Yield and reduces corn rootworm damage", from the University of Missouri and the company New Leaf Symbiotics, published in the Phytobiomes Journal in February, 2026, on a pest that costs over $1 billion a year in the United States alone.3:54
  • The strength of the paper is its field scale: seven years of small plot data across 22 locations plus on-farm evaluations at 81 sites across eight states, where seed inoculation with Methylorubrum extorquens TS201 gave a consistent yield increase of 220 to 351 kilograms per hectare, about two to 3% on an average US yield of 11.7 metric tons per hectare.7:37
  • Transcriptomics and GCMS showed the mechanism: TS201 upregulates the anthranilate biosynthetic pathway so the plant emits methyl anthranilate, and two-choice olfactometer assays showed western corn rootworm larvae turn away from treated roots rather than the bacterium being toxic to the insect.10:27
  • Michelle Swanson then presents "Microbial Metabolism of Food Allergens Determines the Severity of IgE-Mediated Anaphylaxis" in Cell Host and Microbe, recommended by Nancy Borey and led by Alberto Caminero and Rodrigo Jimenez-Sayez, which used germ-free, minimal-microbiota and SPF mice to show that a diverse gut microbiome degrades the peanut allergens ARAH1 and ARAH2 and lowers the allergic respon17:10
  • Human work closed the loop: saliva from 13 people and jejunum aspirates from four volunteers identified Rothia clearing zones on peanut-extract agar, 19 peanut-allergic patients with a high tolerance threshold carried more of these degrading taxa, and in a cohort of 120 children the most sensitive had the least Rothia in their saliva while non-allergic children had the most.33:27
Key Quote
“Quoting Eric, there's no silver bullet for corn rootworm, says Julie Peterson, an entomologist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.”
— Michael Schmidt4:56
Key Quote
“It's basically stinky.”
— Michael Schmidt11:04
Key Quote
“And Rothia is one guest I would love to invite to a family dinner with my grandkids.”
— Michelle Swanson34:55