Groundwork BioAg Secures 'BBB' BeZero Carbon Rating

The rating places Groundwork BioAg among the highest-rated agricultural soil carbon projects, opening a scalable pipeline of independently rated, high-integrity removals for corporate buyers.

MAZOR, Israel, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Groundwork BioAg, the bioagriculture and climatech company behind Rootella®, the world's leading mycorrhizal inoculant, today announced that its Rootella Carbon® program has received a 'BBB' rating from BeZero Carbon, a leading global carbon ratings agency.

BBB is a widely accepted market signal of quality that buyers with the strictest levels of due diligence look to before making a purchase. According to a US carbon marketplace cited by BeZero, and BeZero's own pricing analysis, nature-based credits command an average premium of about 20% for each notch up its rating scale. Within that peer set, Rootella Carbon is distinguished by its measurement approach: direct physical soil sampling on treated fields and paired control fields, rather than modeled estimates.

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Groundwork BioAg is the first company to bring mycorrhizal fungi-driven soil carbon dioxide removal (Mycorrhizal Carbon™) to commercial scale in the US under Verra's rigorous VM0042 framework. With annual sequestration rates reaching 1.5–3.5 tCO₂e/ac (4–9 tCO₂e/ha), its Rootella Carbon program delivers 100% CDR with no avoidance credits. It champions a grower-centric model, ensuring farmers are remunerated for land stewardship, and provides a highly scalable and high-durability carbon removal solution.

Built on Direct Measurement

Rootella Carbon's design addresses the three factors BeZero Carbon evaluates:

• Carbon Accounting (Measure & Remeasure, Not Model): Rootella Carbon relies on direct measuring and remeasuring, contrasting sharply with modeled estimates. The program executed comprehensive control plot planning, featuring 593 sampling points in the 2023 cohort, physically sampled to 30 cm. Treated fields are rigorously evaluated against 915 treated-to-control field pairs matched on Verra's strict Table 7 similarity criteria. As a testament to conservative crediting, a 26.43% uncertainty deduction was applied in the first monitoring period, a conservative approach to crediting.

• Additionality: The Rootella Carbon program represents a distinct practice change. Despite seven years of commercial availability, the weighted adoption rate for biological inputs across the USA and Canada is in its early stages relative to the addressable market. Current low adoption rates suggest that the practice is highly scalable once carbon financing bridges the pricing gap.

• Permanence (Durability): Mycorrhizal fungi move carbon into the soil predominantly as mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM), a soil carbon pool that can persist for centuries to millennia. To mitigate reversal risk, the program's economics are deeply grower-aligned: up to 70% of net project proceeds go directly to the enrolled grower pool.

"For years, the question about soil carbon wasn't whether it worked. It was whether anyone could prove it. Our growers' carbon has been measured in the field, independently verified, and now rated by BeZero at the level buyers actually commit to. BBB is where buyers sign." - Shawn Gagné

Securing Future Inventory

This BBB rating unlocks Rootella Carbon for buyers who require independently rated, high-integrity credits. Following our Q2 2026 issuance of 19,568 tCO2e, Groundwork BioAg is actively selling forward contracts for its upcoming inventory. The next verification cycle in Q1 2027 will yield an estimated issuance of 245,000 tCO2e, scaling rapidly to a forecasted 500,000 tCO2e by Q4 2027.

For institutional buyers and sustainability leads seeking scalable, durable, rated, and verified removals, Rootella Carbon offers immediate forward-contracting opportunities.