Open Innovation

Crop Nutrition

We currently have about 20 ongoing projects in our external innovation program that focus on sustainability issues for crop nutrition. We are highlighting a selected few :

• ICL is collaborating on a multi-year research project with Manish Raizda at the University of Guelph on the directed evolution of crop probiotics that improve the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of corn and wheat.
• ICL is working with Tamar Avin-Wittenberg at the Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University, on a project to develop biostimulants products to promote growth via activation of the autophagy mechanism.
• ICL is working with Dror Minz from the faculty of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences , at ARO – AGRI on a project of characterization of bacterial isolates and their growth conditions which promote metabolite production that increase plant growth.
• ICL is working with Prof. Inna Khozin-Goldberg at the Microalgal Biotechnology Laboratory (MBL), The French Associates Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology for Drylands, The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion University and Ran Erel at Soil and Water Department, at ARO – AGRI on a project to develop microalgae strain/s highly efficient in P acquisition from wastewater in the form of polyphosphate that will be utilized as resource for slow-release phosphorus biofertilizer for agricultural crops.
• ICL is working with University of Wageningen in the Netherlands to evaluate the effect of controlled release fertilizers (CRF) coatings on soil health.
• Our specialty fertilizer business is working with University of Cranfield in the United Kingdom to understand the fundamental aspects of water movement in different soils (horizontal/vertical) and the effect of wetting agents on this movement. This is to develop highly efficient water use efficiency products that will allow our customer to grow crops with less water.

Specialty Chemicals

• ICL has initiated a research collaboration with Professor Eric McFarland in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, UCSB, to explore the novel applications of bromine chemistry and bromine-based processes in low-CO2 sustainable processes for chemical and fuel production. The collaboration will explore potential advantages of chemical conversions that use bromine’s unique chemistry in hydrocarbon conversion processes that make it impossible to produce carbon dioxide. Bromine-mediated processes may cause hydrogen production to be less costly than current Green Hydrogen processes.

Renewable Energy

ICL is collaborating with the Solar Energy Department of Ben Gurion University on two topics:

• Estimation of the albedo effects of salt planes. For this purpose, besides accompanying the experimental setup in Sdom, ICL constructed a field designed especially for albedo measurements.
• Measurement of the degradation rate of Photovoltaic panels in the environment of Sdom.

Food

• ICL is collaborating on a multi-year research project with Jochen Weiss at the Institute of Food Science and Biotechnology, University of Hohenheim (Germany), on enhancing techno-functional properties and food applications of sustainable protein sources from single cells such as microalgae and spent-yeast (upcycling approach), through innovative protein modification at molecular level.