Petrokimia Gresik's GladiAgro Innovation Wins SDGs Award for Soil Restoration
PT Petrokimia Gresik (Persero) has won the SDGs Innovation Accelerator for Young Professionals 2026 award through its GladiAgro: Next-Gen Soil Revival innovation, a solution designed to help restore soil health and support sustainable agriculture.
The innovation received the highest accolade as Outstanding Distinguished Innovator in the event organised by the Indonesia Global Compact Network (IGCN).
Petrokimia Gresik President Director Daconi Khotob said GladiAgro was developed to address the challenge of declining agricultural soil quality, which can affect fertiliser effectiveness and agricultural productivity.
“We want to help farmers improve land conditions so that fertilisation becomes more effective, productivity increases, and agricultural sustainability is maintained,” he said.
The innovation, he added, emerged from the declining quality of agricultural soil in Indonesia, influenced in part by unbalanced fertiliser use and the continued practice of burning agricultural waste.
Based on testing of 40,282 soil samples conducted by Petrokimia Gresik since 2016 across 27 provinces, 91.9 percent of samples showed low organic carbon content.
This condition can reduce soil quality and fertility, diminish fertiliser effectiveness, and make improvements in agricultural productivity less than optimal.
To address this problem, GladiAgro utilises biological products based on Petro Gladiator’s superior microbes to process agricultural waste into Liquid Organic Nutrients (NOC).
These nutrients are then returned to the land to increase organic matter content, improve soil structure, and help restore fertility.
“When soil quality improves, nutrient absorption becomes more optimal, so agricultural productivity can increase and land becomes more adaptive to climate change,” said Daconi.
According to him, GladiAgro has been implemented in Central Java and East Java on various food and horticultural commodities. The programme is strengthened by the AgrooFertile App, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is able to provide commodity-specific fertilisation recommendations.
As a result, farmers can obtain fertilisation recommendations suited to their commodity and land conditions, allowing fertilisation to be carried out more precisely, efficiently, and in an environmentally friendly manner.
Furthermore, GladiAgro has the potential to be replicated across various commodities and regions. The innovation also contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 on food security and SDG 4 on improving farmer capacity.
It also supports SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production, SDG 15 on restoring terrestrial ecosystems, and SDG 17 on strengthening multi-stakeholder collaboration.
“We hope this innovation can serve as a good practice from Indonesia in realising more productive and sustainable agriculture, while helping farmers address soil health challenges and strengthening national food security,” said Daconi.
According to him, this award opens opportunities for GladiAgro to be introduced at the UN Global Compact forum in New York, United States, in September 2026.