"It's important because we need a lot of metal, especially for the energy transition in batteries in electric vehicles,"
"Not only in batteries, but [nickel is] widely used in stainless steel as part of infrastructure. The problem is that with current traditional mining methods, we will not be able to produce enough."
"The plants that we are using have the ability to concentrate the metal that they find in the soil-they concentrate it in their biomass,"
"We've managed to reach close to 7.6% metal within the plants."
Genomines uses gene-edited hyperaccumulator daisies to extract nickel from soil through phytomining. The edited plants are three times larger and absorb about twice as much nickel, enabling economically viable recovery from low-grade soils. The company raised $45 million in Series A funding to scale the approach. Plants concentrate nickel in their biomass, reaching close to 7.6% metal content. Increasing demand for nickel for electric-vehicle batteries and stainless steel coincides with shrinking high-grade reserves from traditional mining. A pilot site in South Africa sits on naturally weathered land with relatively high nickel suitable for phytomining.
Read at Fast Company
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