{"id":361307,"date":"2024-03-22T13:58:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T16:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/brazilian-indian-run-innovative-saudi-based-agtech\/"},"modified":"2024-03-23T16:56:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-23T19:56:33","slug":"brazilian-indian-run-innovative-saudi-based-agtech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/brazilian-indian-run-innovative-saudi-based-agtech\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian, Indian run innovative Saudi-based agtech"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Creating two innovative products for Saudi Arabia<\/strong>\u2019s soil took years of research for Matel\u00e2ndia, Brazil-born chemical engineer Adair Gallo Jr., 32. The project he developed in partnership with the supervising professor in his Master\u2019s and PhD studies in Saudi Arabia, Indian engineer Himanshu Mishra, resulted in Terraxy<\/strong>, a startup that sells a biocoal capable of delivering nutrient to soil and a special sand that helps retain water into the soil and prevents it from evaporating in the dry desert climate. The company has expanded to the point of increasing its CarboSoil <\/strong>biocoal output twentyfold. (Pictured above, Gallo., R, and Himanshu.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Gallo\u2019s story outside Brazil started in 2014 as chemical engineering student from Paran\u00e1, Brazil, who went to the United States for an internship through the Brazilian government\u2019s scholarship program Science without Borders<\/strong>. After a few months in a university in Iowa, United States<\/strong>, he moved on to an internship in California<\/strong> where he met Mishra.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Soil under the seedling was covered by SandX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The professor would soon move to Saudi Arabia to work at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, also known as KAUST<\/strong>, and invited the Brazilian student to move to the Arab country with him. Then Gallo returned to Brazil<\/strong> to finish his undergraduate studies and decided to do an internship at KAUST in 2016 by the invitation of Mishra. The campus of the university was in Thuwal, a village along the coast of Red Sea, 80 kilometers (50 mi) from Jeddah.<\/p>\n

At KAUST, Gallo was later accepted into a master\u2019s course and a PhD. During his studies, he was called on by Mishra to help a colleague studying hydrophobic materials. So started the development of SandX<\/strong> as an academic project back then. It is a material consisting basically of sand and paraffin, which results in sand-like grains able to repel water. \u201cThe new material went wrong in the first tests, because we used brackish water. In later tests, it started going well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Gallo compares the effect of SandX to the plastic used to cover farmlands. But unlike that plastic, SandX doesn\u2019t release small plastic particles on earth. Another comparison is with straw in the no-tillage system. Straw protects the crop from the rain, while SandX prevents the soil from losing water.<\/p>\n

As the water problem was solved, another one was revealed by research \u2013 the soil<\/strong>. Saudi Arabia’s soil has now clay, no organic matter. It\u2019s sandy, alkaline, nutrient-poor, and it has trouble absorbing nutrients and fertilizers made available.<\/p>\n

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CarboSoil: Output has been expanded to cater to demand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then the engineer started researching the soil conditions, alternatives to the lack of nutrients, and he found a solution in a dense, tropical-climate rainforest in Brazil \u2013 the Amazon<\/strong>, particularly in parts of the of Amazonas<\/strong>, Par\u00e1<\/strong>, as well as the Colombian <\/strong>and Peruvian<\/strong> Amazon<\/strong>, too. He found in his studies a type of organic matter resulting from decomposing organic compounds capable of enriching the soil with various nutrients.<\/p>\n

This matter is not native from the region and is only found in areas where there is the soil called terra preta<\/strong> [black soil]. According to Gallo\u2019s research, it was introduced there by humans thousands of years ago, seemingly to enrich the Amazonian soil, which is also poor in nutrients as the hot and humid forest causes a rapid degradation of organic matter.<\/p>\n

According to research disseminated by Brazil’s agricultural research agency Embrapa<\/strong> and studies published in scientific journals, the terra preta<\/em> soil, also known as Indian black earth, is rich in minerals like coal, ashes, vegetables, animal remains, straw, and bones, as well as other organic compounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur innovation was managing to adapt this organic material to the needs of the region\u2019s oil,\u201d says Gallo. This adaptation includes a thermochemical process where the material doesn\u2019t undergo combustion but carbonization. The compound collected is then heated in a closed-off environment. This is the process by which it degrades into biomass and \u201cbecomes\u201d the CarboSoil the company sells. \u201cIt is a process that makes much sense in the carbon capture<\/strong> process,\u201d says Gallo.<\/p>\n

The company still makes a lot of tests with these and other products in development. One of the species used in these is\u00a0 acacia, a plant common in the country because it can thrive even amid the desert climate in Saudi Arabia, which is the target market of the company for now.<\/p>\n

Terraxy would only start as a business in early 2022 when research was able to advance with the university\u2019s support and funding. As the products are being well accepted in the local market, particularly the CarboSoil, it is expected that the company will soon \u201cgrow on its own\u201d, Gallo says, as a KAUST university \u201cspin-off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terraxy has seven employees, including a Brazilian. Gallo is cofounder and CEO, and Mishra is cofounder and chairman. \u201cIn 2021, during my PhD studies, we saw that we were in line with the kingdom\u2019s vision [to diversify the economy] and that [the research products] were commercially viable,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Gallo and his wife \u2013 a Brazilian that develops postdoctoral research at KAUST \u2013 occasionally visit Brazil. Two months ago, the family grew upon the birth of their first son. \u201cNow I live the daily life of the company,\u201d says Gallo. \u201cI like my job here. We live in a place that fosters research. The security we found here can\u2019t be found nowhere else, and the quality of life is unrivalled. It\u2019s an unnegotiable reality,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After years of study and research, engineer Adair Gallo Jr. established Terraxy together with his Indian professor Himanshu Mishra. Company has developed innovations that help the desertic soil retain water and nutrients for agriculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2317,"featured_media":358689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,103],"tags":[48214,3243,36655,48190,48191,48215,48216,13255,34376,28755,48217,48218,44206,48219,48220,26559,48192,48221,5705,48193,48222,9595,48194,48223,2166],"class_list":{"0":"post-361307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-innovation","8":"category-sustainability","9":"tag-adair-gallo-jr-en","10":"tag-amazon","11":"tag-amazonas-en-2","12":"tag-biomass","13":"tag-black-dirt","14":"tag-california-en","15":"tag-carbosoil-en","16":"tag-coal","17":"tag-colombia-en-2","18":"tag-embrapa-en-2","19":"tag-himanshu-mishra-en","20":"tag-iowa-en","21":"tag-jeddah-en-2","22":"tag-kaust-en","23":"tag-matelandia-en","24":"tag-para-en","25":"tag-paraffin","26":"tag-peru-en","27":"tag-red-sea","28":"tag-sand","29":"tag-sandx-en","30":"tag-saudi-arabia-en","31":"tag-science-without-borders","32":"tag-terraxy-en","33":"tag-united-states"},"wps_subtitle":"After years of study and research, engineer Adair Gallo Jr. established Terraxy together with his Indian professor Himanshu Mishra. Company has developed innovations that help the desertic soil retain water and nutrients for agriculture.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}