Preparing for the future has always been an important element for agriculture and the various sciences which surround it. Crop producers are all too aware of the challenges we face in our geographical climate which require effective plant protection products, while the social and political climates are making it difficult for plant protection products to be in the market.
The pressure is on chemicals and the alternative is likely to be some combination of genetic, biological and chemical solutions. While chemical solutions are best known, we are losing many of them and there are very few new ones coming to replace them. This challenges the sustainability of chemicals alone in the long term.
We know genetic resistance to be the natural resistance ability of a variety, plus the technological ability to switch on improved genetic resistance, if we were allowed to use these new biotech tools.
The direction of biological solutions
Less is known about biological solutions and yet these are likely to become much more important. In a visit to FMC’s European Innovation Centre (EIC) earlier this year, it was heartening to hear about the scientific way in which new biological products seem likely to contribute to the future of crop protection.
Duncan Aust (left) is FMC’s R&D director for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. He explained that the biological solution is likely to be a three-pronged approach, involving crop nutrition and seed treatments, as well as biological products.
It is also interesting to note that Duncan sees mixtures with synthetic actives as being a likely combination in such treatments. As for crop nutrition, it goes without saying that a healthy plant should be better able to repel or withstand diseases and pests. But some of these nutritional products could well contain substances of biological origin which might act as either health promoting or growth promoting substances.
As for biological substances, Duncan said the FMC is heading in three specific directions:
Developing high-performing proprietary biological products.Looking for third-party products to support its pipeline.Considering programs with synthetic actives to help reduce the number of applications or the rates or the MRLs.Research facility
FMC’s EIC facility was established in 2016 in Hørsholm in Denmark. This acts as the regional headquarters for the EMEA countries, as well as the Global Centre of excellence for Biologicals R&D and has approximately 160 employees on site. The facility focuses on the discovery and development of biological solutions as a supplement to traditional chemical solutions. It has also developed a strategic collaboration with the Danish Bioscience company Christian Hansen.
Duncan said that the company’s first biological products are already launched in Brazil and Asia and will soon be ready for the US and Canadian markets and later into European markets.
He said that today the EU still views biopesticide products through the same approval lense as synthetic products for registration purposes, and this leads to longer approval times.
New way of thinking
FMC’s biological arm came about following the purchase of a small boutique company in the US, which had a library of new biological agents. These are being evaluated for their efficacy across the insecticide, fungicide and nematicide platforms. This means testing potential strains or agents in the laboratory, identifying the mechanisms of action that may be causing growth inhibition in target organisms, and then actually ensuring a production process that ensures robust product performance.
This is not a straightforward process because fermentation using biological cultures is highly sensitive to a whole range of variables
Using natural microorganisms, as a way of producing new fermentation-derived plant protection agents, is a very technically demanding process. To help succeed in this area, FMC installed a new pilot fermentation facility to be able to upscale these fermentation techniques. Basically, once a useful microorganism is identified, the challenge is then to produce it by fermentation and to be able to control this production process to ensure field efficacy.
This is not a straightforward process because fermentation using biological cultures is highly sensitive to a whole range of variables. In addition, the microorganism must lend itself to being formulated in a way that secures field delivery to have commercial viability. While this is the direction of travel for biological solutions, at least within FMC, Duncan commented that they are not quite there yet for large-scale application in field crops, apart from current in-furrow and seed treatment applications. However, he is confident that they will have a very useful impact in time, possibly alongside conventional genetics and chemistry.
Biologicals can play a useful role in resistance management because they seem to have multi-site activity. He also commented that biological solutions for foliar-applied uses may not always involve the application of live microorganisms.
The very precise development that is going into research on biologicals seems likely to deliver useful field solutions in time. It would seem from these development efforts that fermented substances are likely to be important for the success of biological solutions, which have sufficient flexibility to be used in conjunction with conventional chemistry. That said, it would appear that the EU will need to consider a different system of evaluation for biological products.
Preparing for the future has always been an important element for agriculture and the various sciences which surround it. Crop producers are all too aware of the challenges we face in our geographical climate which require effective plant protection products, while the social and political climates are making it difficult for plant protection products to be in the market.
The pressure is on chemicals and the alternative is likely to be some combination of genetic, biological and chemical solutions. While chemical solutions are best known, we are losing many of them and there are very few new ones coming to replace them. This challenges the sustainability of chemicals alone in the long term.
We know genetic resistance to be the natural resistance ability of a variety, plus the technological ability to switch on improved genetic resistance, if we were allowed to use these new biotech tools.
The direction of biological solutions
Less is known about biological solutions and yet these are likely to become much more important. In a visit to FMC’s European Innovation Centre (EIC) earlier this year, it was heartening to hear about the scientific way in which new biological products seem likely to contribute to the future of crop protection.
Duncan Aust (left) is FMC’s R&D director for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. He explained that the biological solution is likely to be a three-pronged approach, involving crop nutrition and seed treatments, as well as biological products.
It is also interesting to note that Duncan sees mixtures with synthetic actives as being a likely combination in such treatments. As for crop nutrition, it goes without saying that a healthy plant should be better able to repel or withstand diseases and pests. But some of these nutritional products could well contain substances of biological origin which might act as either health promoting or growth promoting substances.
As for biological substances, Duncan said the FMC is heading in three specific directions:
Developing high-performing proprietary biological products.Looking for third-party products to support its pipeline.Considering programs with synthetic actives to help reduce the number of applications or the rates or the MRLs.Research facility
FMC’s EIC facility was established in 2016 in Hørsholm in Denmark. This acts as the regional headquarters for the EMEA countries, as well as the Global Centre of excellence for Biologicals R&D and has approximately 160 employees on site. The facility focuses on the discovery and development of biological solutions as a supplement to traditional chemical solutions. It has also developed a strategic collaboration with the Danish Bioscience company Christian Hansen.
Duncan said that the company’s first biological products are already launched in Brazil and Asia and will soon be ready for the US and Canadian markets and later into European markets.
He said that today the EU still views biopesticide products through the same approval lense as synthetic products for registration purposes, and this leads to longer approval times.
New way of thinking
FMC’s biological arm came about following the purchase of a small boutique company in the US, which had a library of new biological agents. These are being evaluated for their efficacy across the insecticide, fungicide and nematicide platforms. This means testing potential strains or agents in the laboratory, identifying the mechanisms of action that may be causing growth inhibition in target organisms, and then actually ensuring a production process that ensures robust product performance.
This is not a straightforward process because fermentation using biological cultures is highly sensitive to a whole range of variables
Using natural microorganisms, as a way of producing new fermentation-derived plant protection agents, is a very technically demanding process. To help succeed in this area, FMC installed a new pilot fermentation facility to be able to upscale these fermentation techniques. Basically, once a useful microorganism is identified, the challenge is then to produce it by fermentation and to be able to control this production process to ensure field efficacy.
This is not a straightforward process because fermentation using biological cultures is highly sensitive to a whole range of variables. In addition, the microorganism must lend itself to being formulated in a way that secures field delivery to have commercial viability. While this is the direction of travel for biological solutions, at least within FMC, Duncan commented that they are not quite there yet for large-scale application in field crops, apart from current in-furrow and seed treatment applications. However, he is confident that they will have a very useful impact in time, possibly alongside conventional genetics and chemistry.
Biologicals can play a useful role in resistance management because they seem to have multi-site activity. He also commented that biological solutions for foliar-applied uses may not always involve the application of live microorganisms.
The very precise development that is going into research on biologicals seems likely to deliver useful field solutions in time. It would seem from these development efforts that fermented substances are likely to be important for the success of biological solutions, which have sufficient flexibility to be used in conjunction with conventional chemistry. That said, it would appear that the EU will need to consider a different system of evaluation for biological products.
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