Exosect secures exclusive license for fungal isolate from Fera

Intelligent Pest Management Company, Exosect, announced that it has secured an exclusive license for an isolate of the entomopathogenic fungi, Beauveria bassiana (Bb) from Fera, the UK’s Food, Environment and Research Agency. The license covers grain and food storage in Europe with rights to extend to other uses globally.

This deal follows a five year government funded research programme, led by Exosect researching alternative insecticides for the control of pests in stored grain along with Sylvan Bio, CABI and Fera. It leads on from the announcement  last year of a collaborative agreement between Exosect and Sylvan Bio, the specialist in fungal based solid substrate fermentation and one of the consortium members, to develop a formulation of an isolate of Beauveria bassiana* (Bb) and Exosect’s platform technology, Entostat™.

Martin Brown, Managing Director at Exosect comments, “This is another significant leap forward for this project. We know that the grain store industry is under immense pressure after the removal of a number of key insecticides and fumigants but we are on track to commercialise this exciting new technology into this sector in the near future”.