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MATI and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have signed an MOU establishing a five-year collaboration to generate evidence on enhanced rock weathering in African farming systems. The framework provides for joint field trials in Kenya and Nigeria, data sharing and analysis, scientific publication, capacity building with national research institutions, and joint fundraising. The agreement was signed during COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye.
The MOU was signed by Shantanu Agarwal, founder and CEO, MATI; John Choptiany, Resilience and Climate Adaptation Programme Lead at IITA; and Todd Rosenstock, Director of Climate Action at CGIAR. The signing took place at the Food and Agriculture Pavilion, hosted by CGIAR and FAO at COP3.
The partnership brings the trials into two CGIAR Science Programs. The CGIAR Sustainable Farming Program, which works with national partners in more than 20 countries to put integrated agronomy and soil health solutions into the hands of smallholder farmers, will connect the results to the advisory services that reach farmers in the field. The CGIAR Climate Action Program will link the evidence to its work on helping farming systems adapt to heat and drought and cut emissions, and to the climate policy and finance decisions that follow.
The field trials will assess the effects of rock dust, in the form of crushed basalt applied to soil, on soil health and crop growth. They will also examine its performance alongside reduced use of synthetic fertiliser and help identify the soil types and farming systems in which it may be most effective. The collaboration aims to build an agronomic evidence base that can help determine where enhanced rock weathering is a suitable agricultural intervention and inform research and policy decisions.
“Smallholder farmers are facing hotter seasons, longer dry spells and fertiliser prices they cannot always afford. Rock dust could help on all three fronts, but that has to be shown in African fields first,” said John Choptiany, Resilience and Climate Adaptation Programme Lead at IITA. “These trials will tell us whether it can help farmers get more from every bag of fertiliser and keep their harvests steady when the weather turns against them.”
MATI applies natural rock dust to fields managed by smallholder farmers at no cost to them. The company says the material can help address soil acidity and supply nutrients. As the rock weathers, it can also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through a process known as enhanced rock weathering. MATI reports that, in a 2025 kharif-season rice comparison involving 235 farmer fields across four Indian states, fields treated with rock dust produced a median of 25% more grain than control plots. This result is specific to the reported India study; the planned collaboration with IITA will investigate how rock dust performs in African soils and farming systems.
“Farmers should get advice on rock dust that comes from trials in their own soils, run by scientists their governments already trust,” said Shantanu Agarwal, founder and CEO, MATI. “The trials with IITA will help establish where rock dust may benefit crop production, the scale of any benefits, and how it should be applied. That evidence can support farmers, researchers and policymakers in making informed decisions.”
In Africa, MATI began work in Zambia in 2023 and has since generated initial results. The collaboration with IITA is intended to build on this experience through structured agricultural testing in African conditions. The trials will examine how rock dust performs across different soils, crops and application rates, and help establish where the approach is agronomically suitable. The partners will also assess how it can be used alongside synthetic fertiliser and what this could mean for soil health, crop performance and farmer resilience.
“Smallholder farmers across Africa are working soils that have lost fertility over decades, and they need options that are tested where they farm,” said John Choptiany, Resilience and Climate Adaptation Program Lead at IITA. “These trials will help us understand what crushed basalt does for soil health, crop productivity and resilience to heat and drought, and whether it can make the fertiliser farmers already use go further. If the results hold up, this is a practice that could be taken up well beyond the fields of any single trial.”
