BioConsortia: Discovering Superior Biologicals Powered by its Discovery Platform, Delivering Innovation Nitrogen Fixing, Bionematicides, Biofungicide and Post-harvest Products

Editor Note: ″BioConsortia’s discovery platform is based on the proprietary and patented  Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) system, that uses directed selection  to discover superior biologicals. At this stage of the development process, BioConsortia can develop the leads as wildtype microbials, or can use cutting edge biotechnology including gene-editing and other non-GMO methods to further unleash the full potential of the product,″ said Marcus Meadows-Smith, CEO at BioConsortia in a recent interview with AgroPages.

In addition, he also shared his views on the opportunities and challenges for biologicals; BioConsortia’s biological product line and their innovation points, challenges and countermeasures of  biological formulation development, main target markets and expansion strategies, customized usage guidance and technical services for users, emerging technologies application, as well as the predictions for the next breakthrough innovation in this area etc.

                                                       Marcus Meadows-Smith, CEO at BioConsortia

AgroPages: Could you describe the market landscape of the biological market? What are the drivers, challenges and trends of the development of biologicals?

Let me jump straight to the punch line. Biologicals are now being used by mainstream conventional growers and they expect higher levels of efficacy and consistency than the organic growers and the ″first movers & influencers″ in the biological space. Therefore, the most important trend is that some biological companies, such as BioConsortia, are ″unleashing the power of microbes″. These new products are far superior to today’s leading biological products..

BioConsortia’s discovery platform is based on the proprietary and patented  Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) system, that uses directed selection  to discover superior biologicals. At this stage of the development process, BioConsortia can develop the leads as wildtype microbials, or can use cutting edge biotechnology including gene-editing and other non-GMO methodsto further unleash the full potential of the product.

One of BioConsortia’s most compelling examples of their gene-editing  platform is the company’s Nitrogen fixing microbes that are designed to continuously fix atmospheric nitrogen and deliver it to the plant roots as ammonia, a version easily taken up by plants to fuel growth.  While the wildtype microbe switches off the expensive N-fixation process as ammonium levels reach levels sensed by the microbe, BioConsortia’s gene-edited microbes have been designed to continuously fix nitrogen.  

The company also uses it’s advanced microbial improvement techniques to increase the nematicidal properties of the wildtype microbes that colonize the roots of crop plants and protect them from yield robbing nematode worms, improving spectrum and efficacy.

BioConsortia’s scientists focus their efforts on Gram positive spore-forming microbes – these are so robust that they have 2 years shelf life at on farm warehouse temperatures (no need to be cooled), 2 years life on seed, compatibility to be tank mixed with synthetic pesticides, and even stable and effective when applied to a fertilizer granule for over 40 months.  This ensures growers find the products easy to use and compatible with existing farm practices, chemistries and fertilizers - a big new step forward.   

Beside these technical breakthroughs that will change the face of biologicals in the coming year, the other big change is the growth of the biologicals market in Brazil, especially as this has occurred primarily in row crops, whereas the rest of the world has mostly positioned biologicals on fruit and vegetable crops. Brazil market has grown rapidly in the last 5 years, to the point that Brazil is now the leading country in terms of adoption of biologicals for row crops.    

AgroPages: Could you talk about the regulatory landscape of biologicals in major regions/key countries worldwide? What impact do these regulations have on your company’s business?

Biologicals, as you know, can mean biopesticides, biofertilizers or biostimulants.  Let’s focus on biopesticides:

i. The US-EPA processes have been favorable for biological-based pesticides for many years, and this helped the US biologicals market grow to one of the largest markets. The regulatory review timeline was is shorter than that of synthetic pesticides, reflecting the reduced toxicological risk of biological products.  The process is robust and based on a logical scientific basis and data requirements.  

ii. Brazil has recently transformed their regulatory processes, and this has led to the explosive growth of this market. Formerly, registration of biologicals in Brazil took 5-6 years, similar to the timeline for a synthetic pesticide.. Today regulatory review of a biological pesticide takes about 1 year, once you have the local efficacy data and safety/registration package to support the approval.

iii. Sadly, the EU remains very slow for the registration of biologicals, despite the desperate need for new biologicals given the delisting/banning of many synthetic pesticides. European growers operate within the constraints of a reduced pesticide tool kit and no replacements coming to market due to the cost and long timeline for registration.

iv. Most of the rest of the world sits between the US and EU models, and so manufacturers can target countries for growth.
For biostimulants and biofertilizers, there has been a recent uptick in market entrants especially in EU, USA and Brazil, as new registration pathways have allowed speedy market entry.  It is essential that these process be allowed to run as efficiently as possible if we are to address the challenge of feeding the world in the face of climate change.  
 
AgroPages: Could you give us an overview of your company's biological product line and their innovation points? What’s the plan of product development and integration in the future?

BioConsortia has an amazing pipeline of transformational microbial products. These will be game changers for growers and the industry.

Our Nitrogen fixing microbial seed treatments can replace a portion of a grower’s synthetic N fertilizer program. These seed treatments can be mixed with fungicide and insecticide seed treatments, as well as coatings and colorants, and will be the first N-fixing products on the market that can deliver 2 years life on corn seed. This makes them very easy to use.  Many other nitrogen-fixing products are applied at the farm; BioConsortia’s products will be applied at the industrial seed company, or at seed treatment facilities, as well as by growers, giving a wide range of options.

BioConsortia has the strongest pipeline of bionematicides in the industry. In field trials run by independent contract research organizations (CROs), BioConsortia nematicides have outperformed the leading chemical and biological nematicides on the market today.

Post-harvest protection is another area where we will bring game changing technology: the first microbial that gives long term protection to fruit and other farm produce from pathogens. We expect to gain rapid adoption on conventional fruits and for the first time offer good protection to organic food stuffs.    

Later this year, our biofungicide AMARA will be launched in North America by one of our partners, Nichino America.  Our portfolio of development fungicides also includes a microbial seed treatment fungicide that effectively controls pythium that is currently under evaluation by some major seed and seed treatment companies.

As you can see BioConsortia’s pipeline is unique in its breadth and depth of breakthrough technologies.

AgroPages: What are the challenges of biological formulation development and countermeasures? Could you share some specific cases? Such as how your company is improving stability and efficiency for biological.

Historically the complaint against many biologicals has been that they are inconsistent, hard to use, require high doses or require special handing such as cold chain.

At BioConsortia, we start with the needs of the grower in mind when we design our product. Based on our patented AMS (Advanced Microbial Selection) platform, we have been able to discover novel microbes that are both robust spore-formers and also have high efficacy against key targets. Using the AMS system, we begin with diverse soil samples containing millions of diverse (but not-yet-identified) microbes.  We grow crop plants in these soils under stresses such as nematicides, soil fungal diseases e.g. pythium, or zero Nitrogen. The plants that survive these harsh biotic and abiotic challenges have recruited microbes from their soil to help them.  We carry out this process for several generations, effectively enriching for beneficial microbes from the trillions of the microbes in the starting soils, even before we do any microbial isolations. For example, a plant must have recruited N fixing microbes if it is green and healthy when growing on a zero N media. Or have recruited fungicidal microbes if it is healthy in a soil that we have added a high dose of pythium disease.  

This process helps us find spore-forming Gram positive microbes that are naturally robust, stable and easy to use, and have demonstrated they are plant associated and deliver some abiotic or biotic effect. Sometimes this process identifies microbes from well-known microbial classes.  But, more excitingly, BioConsortia is currently focused on developing products from newly discovered novel Gram positive strains with exciting new benefits high efficacy for a target stress or pest.

Microbes also produce natural metabolites that can provide the protection from nematodes, insects and diseases. BioConsortia uses proprietary methods to ensure these metabolites are bioavailable in the formulated product at levels as much as 8X higher than most microbial biofungicides, for example.  This means our use rates can be lower and our products perform across a wider spectrum of pests.

Our target is to have products that are equivalent in efficacy to synthetic pesticides.

AgroPages: How do you see the value of adjuvant in biological innovation? Criteria for selecting adjuvants?

Our seed treatment Nitrogen fixers, nematicides, and fungicides are generally mixed with the existing chemistries, colors and polymers used by the seed and seed treatment companies. While we evaluate our technology to ensure compatibility with those commonly used, our seed treatment products don’t require special adjuvant packages.

Foliar biofungicides, especially contact products, are often enhanced by the addition of adjuvants to ensure good coverage and/or sticking prior to rainfall. The same effect can be achieved by using the correct dilution & application rate, and good & well calibrated sprayer. However, adjuvants are often recommended as an insurance policy to ensure good coverage, we ask  distributors to make these recommendation based on their knowledge of local conditions and the growers they supply.

AgroPages: Regulatory approval is required before market entry. What are BioConsortia's experiences and practices in this area? How do you ensure efficient approval?

BioConsortia is an R&D company and all our products are planned for sale via a partner company seed, seed treatment, crop protection or fertilizer company. We secure the first registrations of our biopesticide products in both the USA and Brazil, and then enable ourpartners to set the regulatory and commercial strategy around the world.

Biopesticide regulatory processes in the USA and Brazil  are scientific, reasoned and reasonable in terms of data requirements, costs and timelines.

BioConsortia has already registered Nitrogen fixing and biostimulant products in the USA and have initiated the registration process in Brazil. Again, these registration models are effective.

AgroPages: What target markets does your company focus on? What are the  expansion strategies in different countries and regions in the future?

Our NF technology will target those crops where nitrogen fertilizer is frequently used, broadacre crops like corn, wheat, rice and cotton.  Our NF technology has demonstrated it performs well in vegetable crops like potato and tomato.  In several years field trials in potato, we’ve shown our technology can effectively replace the yield produced by 70 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer.  We expect to have the first nitrogen-fixing seed treatment for European markets, where gene-editing approaches are not yet accepted. We will deploy our wildtype (not edited) approach here.   

We conduct extensive field trial programs in the USA, Brazil and EU to demonstrate the products efficacy, as well as register them in USA and Brazil. In parallel, we introduce our products to potential partners to test and fit within their existing portfolios.

Our products are better than the market leading products on the market today. Therefore, we are able to partner with the major seed, seed treatment, crop protect and fertilizer companies for the global expansion of the product registration and sales.

AgroPages:  What are the considerations for farmers/growers to use biologicals? How does BioConsortia provide customized usage guidance and technical services for users based on different crop conditions and environmental conditions?

BioConsortia’s unique discovery platform ensures that we only discover and develop microbes that are strong plant colonizers as they were isolated from the roots, shoots or internal tissues of crop plants that we grown under a biotic or abiotic stress in our AMS process.  

Even before we go to field trials, we test our microbial leads against multiple crops, different soil types at different temperatures and at different pH. We look to dramatically reduce the inconsistency that is often the downfall or limiting factor of many biologicals. We have demonstrated this improved consistency across hundreds of field trials in different locations and different crops.

BioConsortia’s RhizoViz tool enables us to visualize root colonization in diverse soil types, pH’s and temperatures.  This helps us develop products for specific markets – a seed treatment for winter wheat needs to perform in much different conditions than does one for cotton. The same tool helps us write product labels that will guide growers to success.

AgroPages: What attempts has BioConsortia made in utilizing emerging technologies such as Crispr, artificial intelligence and big data to optimize product development and application?

Crispr works very well for gene editing eukaryotes (plants and animals). However, it is not very effective for microbes. Instead, we use proprietary tools for gene editing microbes. We believe we are the leaders in gene editing Gram-positive microbes for agriculture. These very targeted edits are regulated in a similar way to wild type microbes in the USA, Brazil and some other jurisdictions, as the changes could occur naturally, as we do not add DNA or genetic material from another species.

BioConsortia’s Nitrogen fixing Gram positive microbials will be a game changer. We expect to replace the current gene edited products on the market.   

Big data - BioConsortia uses bioinformatics tools like genome sequencing and microbiome analysis to power our activities to deliver the best microbial products in the field to help protect plants and/or increase yields. This is a massive data platform that ties genome to function, and more importantly, cross-references to our greenhouse and field trial plant phenotype data, so that we  leverage genome, function and phenological data to accelerate our discovery and development activities.  

AgroPages: What are the biological development strategies in response to evolving changes over the market requirements, regulation & policy and application technologies?

Growers need products that have superior efficacy & higher consistency, while helping to protect the environment. Regulators and governments are trying to promote these targets.

BioConsortia is proud to be at the cutting edge of this trend with our superior wildtype as well as gene edited microbial products.

AgroPages: What kind of biologicals do you think are the most promising? What do you feel could be the next breakthrough innovation?

We have 3 areas of game changers:

 
i. nematicides to help protect $157 billion of crop lost annually to these tiny soil pests.
ii. Post-harvest products to help protect the more than 50% of all fruit that is lost between the harvest in the field and the consumers tables.
iii. Nitrogen fixing products for all crops to help grow yields, increase grower profits, while better protecting the environment.  

BioConsortia’s Nitrogen fixing microbes for corn, wheat, potatoes, rice, as well as most other row crops, fruit and vegetables will bring some of the biggest benefits to growers with increased yields along with reduced application of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. This is important as the more than product of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is responsible foR 2-4% of greenhouse gases, plus 50% of N applied by growers is lost to the environment sometimes with unintended harmful consequences such as leaching into ground water or runoff into waterways causing algal booms and dead zones in lakes and oceans.  

If you'd  like to share your company's story and solutions, please contact Grace Yuan: grace@agropages.com