NCGA selects Terragia as a winner of Corn Challenge V

View the full announcement here: NCGA Honors Three Winners Driving Innovation in Consider Corn Challenge V on ncga.com

At today’s Bio Innovations Midwest Event in Omaha, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) announced the winners of the Consider Corn Challenge V and the $300,000 prize pool. Three winners were chosen, each with a unique way to improve a product or process using corn to produce biobased materials. 

“The Consider Corn Challenge fosters innovative collaborations between corn farmers and both the public and private sectors, which paves the way for new products, chemicals, and applications. This year’s winners have continued to demonstrate corn’s adaptability,” said Director of Research & Market Development Sarah McKay. “Corn’s versatile applications as an industrial feedstock can be witnessed in the diverse approaches and applications of each of the three winners. This contest continues to highlight the fact that U.S. corn is an extremely flexible feedstock suited for biobased products and crucial to advancing the biobased economy.” 

The three winners for the Consider Corn Challenge V are Aerterra, Terragia, and Arizona State University.

Terragia is developing technology to enable cost-effective biological conversion of cellulosic biomass to fuels and products – with great potential for value creation for corn farmers across the United States. The first application of this technology is fermentation of stillage from corn ethanol production. For ethanol producers, that means potential for a 10% increase in ethanol production, higher-protein DDGS, more corn oil, and $80 million in added annual revenue for a 105 MGY plant.

Building on groundbreaking research from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College and with the support of the DOE’s Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), USDA, NSF, and private investors, Terragia uses distinctive biotechnological capability to engineer thermophilic anaerobic bacteria for one-step consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) of cellulosic biomass. Terragia’s thermophilic anaerobes excel at breaking down biomass, unlocking the energy in feedstocks such as corn fiber and corn stover—without costly pretreatment or added enzymes.

Terragia’s near-term business model is to partner with producers and the agricultural community to co-locate projects at existing facilities.