STAT Communications Ag Market News

Bio-Pesticides Have Another Chance

AUCKLAND - Sep 11/03 - SNS -- EnCoate was launched in Auckland yesterday, and has plans to revolutionize the organic pesticide business.

A joint venture between Ballance Agri-Nutrients and Celentis, EnCoate already has a fully developed and patented product ready to take to the market.

They plan on marketing a biopolymer coating that makes biological pesticides more stable and practical to use. According to research conducted by the company, it is the first product of its type in the world.

Bio-pesticides are made up of fungi and bacterium designed to attack and kill specific pests. However, the major problem with them was that they were far too unstable to be useful on a commercial scale, said EnCoate chief executive Elizabeth Hopkins.

Usually, bio-pesticides had to be refrigerated to transport, or they were just difficult to package in a way that could be easily used by farmers, she said.

With the biopolymers developed by EnCoate, these pesticides can be used as sprays, seed coatings or granules.

The growing environmental and food safety interest in consumers, especially in Europe, has spurred the growth of bio-pesticide businesses.

EnCoate has plans to license the technology around the world and has already started talking to companies in the U.S. and U.K.

Ballance Agri-Nutrients will produce the first EnCoate enhanced bio-pesticides for the domestic market.

Its first product, scheduled to launch in February, will target grass grub, a pest that has infested more than one million hectares of land in New Zealand and costs farmers millions of dollars a year.

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