Exosect forms collaborative agreement with Sylvan Bio

Exosect, a leading provider of intelligent pest management solutions, today announced that it has signed a collaborative agreement with Sylvan Bio, the specialist in fungal based solid substrate fermentation. The agreement covers the development of a formulation of an isolate of the entomopathogenic fungi, Beauveria bassiana (Bb) and Exosect’s platform technology, Entostat™ initially for the control of grain store pests.

The deal follows five years of government funded research on ‘The grain store project’, an Exosect led consortium researching into alternative insecticides for the control of pests in stored grain along with Sylvan Bio, CABI and FERA.

Martin Brown, Managing Director at Exosect comments, “We are extremely pleased to be working with Sylvan Bio on this collaboration as it is one of the few companies capable of producing fungal isolates using solid substrate fermentation to a commercial scale”.

Brown continues, “This agreement is very timely for the grain store industry. While regulators continue to remove traditional chemistry from this market sector, modern, effective and environmentally acceptable technology is in huge demand. This type of technology is completely new to the grain store market sector and will greatly benefit post-harvest residue reduction targets”.

Pierre Grammare, General Manager at Sylvan Bio Europe comments, “Sylvan is delighted to be collaborating with Exosect. Both companies have specialist yet different skills and working together to develop a fungal product using Exosect’s novel delivery mechanism is a significant step forward in the development of Bio control agents. The technology will offer a real alternative to chemical control of grain store pests.”

Exosect and Sylvan Bio intend to have a regulatory dossier in place in the EU and the US in 2013.