September 16, 2025

NCGA Honors Three Winners Driving Innovation in Consider Corn Challenge V

At the 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 three winners for the Consider Corn Challenge V are Aerterra, Terragia, and Arizona State University. Aerterra is redefining indoor air quality with the first bio-based, renewable air filters made from U.S.-grown corn. Engineered to replace petroleum-based filters, Aerterra delivers high-performance filtration with a fraction of the environmental impact. By turning a traditionally disposable product into a sustainable solution, Aerterra helps homes, businesses, and communities improve air quality while reducing their carbon footprint.

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 DDGS from corn ethanol production. For ethanol producers, that means potential for a 10% increase in ethanol production, unique high-protein DDGS, more corn oil, and $80 million in added annual revenue for a 105 million gallon per year plant.

Arizona State University’s winning technology is a corrosion mitigation for crude oil pipelines that employs corn-derived inhibitors. About 25% of all crude oil pipeline accidents reported in the year 2024 were due to corrosion, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration statistics. The United States has a quarter-million-mile-long crude oil pipeline network and produced 13.5 million barrels of crude oil per day in May of 2025. ASU’s technology is a new corn-derived corrosion inhibitor suitable for use in crude oil pipelines to mitigate internal corrosion without the need to replace the pipes. This product has the potential to create a new market for corn farmers and contribute positively to the U.S. pipeline infrastructure resilience.

“A top priority for the Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB) is developing new uses and additional markets for corn,” said ICPB President and Belmond, Iowa, farmer Joe Roberts. “The Consider Corn Challenge highlights the versatility of corn and its many uses, while building new relationships between industry and corn producers, cultivating innovative, market-driven solutions.”

The total prize pool for the fourth iteration of the contest was U.S. $300,000. Each of the three winners received $100,000 to utilize to get their technologies and products closer to commercialization.