Certis Belchim Progresses Biorationals Innovation towards Sustainable Crop Protection Solutions

Agriculture has long relied on innovation to help meet the changing requirements of its customers. Over the years, the industry has responded to ever-increasing demands for more output, more mechanisation, new, more productive and healthier crops. Most recently, in response to demands for healthier, safer and more sustainable food production, a clear and pressing need has arisen to develop new biological alternatives to chemical-based pesticides.

The creation in 2022 of Certis Belchim, through the merger of Certis Europe and Belchim Crop Protection, brought together the strengths and scope of the two companies for the benefit of farmers in Europe and across continents around the world. The new company continues to focus on providing biological crop protection products to contribute to innovative, sustainable solutions that help growers and farmers meet crop protection and commercial challenges to produce safe, quality crops for their customers. 

Innovation lies at the heart of our work and the company has consistently focused on the screening, early-stage development and assessment of potential new products to improve and grow its Biorationals portfolio. Since registration was introduced for biostimulants, our definition of Biorationals¹ can now include registered biostimulants as well as registered biological crop protection products. Interesting new biological products and biostimulants have been developed and introduced to the market, as the company has successfully progressed its aims to launch at least one new Biorational product per year. 

Our approach has led us to look at the needs of the market and then endeavour to find novel Biorational products to meet those needs. As a result, we have established several working partnerships with innovative technology companies to assist in the creation of new products. 

For example, Renaissance BioScience’s bioengineering technology, using gene-targeted RNAi engineering to create new biological crop protection products and solutions, enables us to be specific in terms of species impacted. With increasing problems of control from the few conventional crop protection products left available to farmers and growing incidence of resistance, we anticipate that the challenges to control, for example Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle in oilseed rape or Colorado Potato Beetle in potatoes will only intensify in future. We have therefore been concentrating on alternative bio-solutions for these beetle pests and are making good progress for these large area crops.

Clever BioScience bases its work on biochemistry, and micro- and molecular biological techniques to develop and deliver innovative Biorational products with low environmental impact. We take advantage of Clever’s technology to develop products from unique natural peptides originally produced by plants for the control of plant diseases and we are already seeing good results in our trials. We are making progress with products for disease control such as Fusarium Head Blight in cereals and Cercospora in sugar beet. Our cooperation is going well and we are also working together on several other disease solutions.

Another partner, Landlab, has extensive experience and expertise in the development of special fertilisers and novel plant biostimulants and is helping us in this field. Their expertise allows product evaluation under diverse conditions, including those generated by abiotic stress. Equipped with advanced simulation capabilities and state-of-the-art technologies such as phenotyping detection systems, Landlab can provide thorough evaluation and validation of biostimulant efficacy in a range of crops and is contributing to the development of biostimulants in our portfolio.

Development is also ongoing with other companies to find more extracts from nature, especially looking for single molecules that will be active against difficult to control pests, diseases and even weeds. One of the major challenges is to find biomolecules that are fit for purpose in open field crops since Biorationals, by nature, degrade more quickly than conventional chemistry. We have identified some promising molecules from new technologies. However, it is not proving easy to find Biorationals that are equal to conventional chemical products. We know what to look for and are doing our best to deliver what is needed in terms of environmentally friendly, safe products that provide strong performance in protected and open field crops.

We launched our strategic sustainability project, Growing For The Future (G4TF) more than 12 years ago, based on pest and disease control programmes to help farmers meet European supermarket requirements for reduced conventional chemical residues in their produce. Working in partnership with the main producers and farmers’ associations, innovative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programmes were developed in both conventional and organic agriculture. Our work was initially based on greenhouse and outdoor vegetable crops, but gradually extended to a wide range of berries, top fruit, citrus, vines, and olives. Spain was the first beneficiary of these programmes combining synthetic chemical with Biorational products of microbiological and natural origin, plus auxiliary insects and pheromones. We have long been committed to providing farmers with production programmes fully adapted to current market and consumer demand, with the following objectives:

● To provide maximum efficacy against pests and diseases.

● To reduce the use of synthetic chemical materials – thanks to the combination of synthetic and Biorational products.

● To reduce or eliminate residues in fruit and vegetables, minimizing food safety concerns for consumers and maintaining alignment with the traceability, responsibility, and sustainability of the entire agricultural value chain.

● To reduce the coefficient of environmental impact in line with sustainability and regenerative agriculture practices.

● To support the farmer’s profitability.

We continue to make investments in the G4TF project and have now extended its reach to key crops in other countries across Europe with a large number of projects carried out through Contract Research Organisations (CROs) to ensure that we have accurate and reliable data available to prove the G4TF concept to the entire value chain. Programmes are adapted to local needs and conditions, complying with regulations and providing efficient safe solutions for applicators, consumers and the environment.

Over the years a huge amount of knowledge and experience has been acquired and, to provide farmers with the necessary tools to meet future requirements for their crops, we have launched the Growing Academy. This has been possible thanks to our experience in combining chemical and biorational products in clear IPM programmes for different crops and also to our strategic alliances with researchers and Universities. The Growing Academy provides a valuable means of sharing expert technical and scientific knowledge with agricultural technicians and professionals, their clients, applicators, producers, and advisers in both integrated production and organic farming. Accredited experts from the agricultural sector who have professional experience of implementation of the G4TF crop strategies, together with qualified professionals from Certis Belchim, provide training masterclasses online encompassing soil health and sustainability themes and address the implementation of sustainable strategies for key European crops. For example, aspects of soil health, such as the support of positive microbiota in the soil, can be addressed using a combination of Biorational compounds (registered as Plant Protection Products) against soil diseases and nematodes together with seaweed and microorganisms (registered as Biostimulants), to improve root development, nutrient use efficiency and to prevent abiotic stress. 

With our Growing For The Future programme we remain committed to supporting sustainability and sustainable crop protection and continue to believe that innovation in Biorationals is vital as a key part of the solution for the future.

¹ Definition: Biorationals are registered Plant Protection and Bio-Stimulant products, generally derived from the natural environment, offering improved benefits for plants, people and the planet, which are increasingly important to enable Integrated Crop Production and meet the requirements of the food chain and consumers.

Learn more about Certis Belchim >>

This article was originally published in AgroPages magazine 2024 Biologicals Special.

Contact Joyce Wang (joyce@agropages.com) to show your bio-solutions through AgroPages.