Paraguay issues full approval of Oxitec's Friendly™ fall armyworm to help combat growing threat of pest pressure on crops, food security

• Oxitec's Friendly™ fall armyworm has been fully approved by regulators for use in Paraguay to help protect economically important commodity crops.

• Oxitec's Friendly™ fall armyworm is a new, sustainable solution for one of the world's most devastating crop pests, and this approval makes Paraguay the second country to approve this critical new technology impacting major agricultural centres in Latin America and beyond.

• Deployment of Friendly™ fall armyworm offers unmatched protection to the durability of biotech crops against the threat of pest resistance, an increasingly urgent threat to food sustainability.

Oxitec Ltd, the leading developer of insect-based biological solutions to control pests that transmit disease, destroy crops and harm livestock, announced the full commercial approval of its Friendly™ fall armyworm solution in Paraguay, one of Latin America's leading food-producing countries. This is the second commercial approval of the product in Latin America following its 2022 approval in Brazil.

The Friendly™ fall armyworm has been developed to combat the caterpillar Spodoptera frugiperda, commonly known as fall armyworm, a devastating pest that damages maize, cotton and other important crops in Paraguay. Releases of the Friendly™ fall armyworm males reduce pest populations in a safe, biological and environmentally friendly way. This approach is designed to work hand in hand with the existing tools available to farmers, counteracting pest resistance to offer long term crop protection.

In advance of commercial approval in Paraguay, the Friendly™ fall armyworm product has undergone extensive pilots on farms across Brazil

Fall armyworm poses a major threat to food security and economic sustainability worldwide. This invasive pest can be difficult to control and has developed resistance to conventional tools such as sprayed insecticides and biotech crops. It can result in the loss of up to 50% of farmers' crops, and in recent years has spread beyond the Americas, now also imposing an economic burden of billions of dollars across Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Friendly™ fall armyworm will be made available to farmers in Paraguay to help protect their crops against this damaging and invasive insect species, offering a sustainable, environmentally friendly solution to compliment currently available management tools. Delivering this biological option to the market is an important step towards building long-term sustainability into Paraguayan food production. Oxitec is now readying operational infrastructure and activating supply chains to prepare for the coming growing seasons.

Grey Frandsen, Oxitec CEO, stated: "We're thankful to the Paraguayan government for taking a strong leadership role in the region to help combat the major threat that fall armyworm poses to farmers' harvests and livelihoods. Their approval of Oxitec's Friendly™ fall armyworm solution will allow Oxitec to offer farmers in Paraguay a new, powerful option to enhance their crop protection toolkits, prevent over-reliance on older tools, and reduce their environmental footprint. Following commercial approval in Brazil, Paraguay's decision marks the importance of international collaboration to combat this growing threat."

Like Oxitec's Friendly™ Aedes aegypti mosquito control product currently serving communities across Brazil, the Friendly™ fall armyworm carries a self-limiting gene, which enables production of male-only insects. After release into the field, these Friendly™ males will find and mate with wild females. The self-limiting gene is passed to their offspring, preventing female offspring from surviving to reproduce. Sustained releases of Friendly™ male fall armyworm can thereby rapidly reduce the number of fall armyworm resident in the crop. Friendly™ fall armyworm may potentially protect efficacy of other fall armyworm management tools, including insecticides and biotech crops, by counteracting pest resistance to these other essential tools.