Expanding The Toolbox For Agricultural Pest Control
by Steven Savage · ForbesPests have always been a challenge for farmers because insects, fungi, bacteria, and rodents cause damage even on plants in natural ecosystems. Their impact in agriculture is of greater consequence for humans. Plants compete with each other for sun, nutrients and water and that is what weeds do in a farm setting. Starting in the late 1800s people discovered that chemicals, such as copper sulfate, could prevent a pest from causing crop damage. The chemistry-based crop protection industry developed and became a major factor in the increasing productivity of agriculture. Some of the early products ended up having serious downsides for the environment and human health which were ultimately dealt with through increasingly sophisticated regulation by bodies such as the EPA. Other pest control tools such as biologicals, crop breeding, and genetic modification were developed and farmers have been able to use all these tools to inplement “Integrated Pest Management” which can greatly reduce pest-related damage. That allows them to make more efficient use of land, water and other resources.
However; nature does not stand still, and so pests can evolve resistance to just about any control method. Thus, there is a constant need to search for new, safe, and effective pest control options. That search has become increasingly challenging and expensive over time. Biological controls can help and they are less costly to bring through the regulatory process, but they have limitations and are often best used in combination with chemical options. Crop genetic engineering can be a very effective way to manage pests, but only a few crops like corn and soybeans made the transition to use of those methods before the anti-GMO movement effectively blocked that option from being able to the growers of almost all other crops. Overall, the “tool box” for pest management is getting less robust for many farmers today.
Fortunately there are companies pursuing highly innovative solutions for the pest management gap including three companies described below:
Enco
Enko is a company co-founded by Jacqueline Heard in 2017. Jacqueline, motivated by concerns over future food supply, pursued a career in agriculture starting with a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology – the study of plant diseases. Highlights for her career include being part of a Monsanto project to develop drought tolerant corn technology that could help farmers in Africa, heading the company’s venture partnering group, and earning the MBA that sparked her entrepreneurial journey. Jacqueline joined Anterra Capital as a venture partner in 2016 where she combined her agriculture knowledge with then emerging AI capabilities, applying Pharma style R&D to plants. Their technology research platform ENKOMPASS® was the first of its kind in agriculture, enabled by an extensive DNA encoded library licensed from Enko’s pharmaceutical partner, X—Chem. Enko was born.
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ENKOMPASS® guides Enko’s R&D, identifying new modes of action and lead molecules 75% faster and at 90% lower cost than traditional R&D methods, screening billions of molecules simultaneously for safety attributes and efficacy before more costly optimization. This drastically reduces the risk in the discovery process by ensuring Enko pursues solutions that have a high likelihood of passing regulatory hurdles. Pre-screening greatly reduces threats to humans, beneficial insects, the soil and crops.
For their first target, Enko picked a plant enzyme, a PPO and found a new pre-emergent herbicide that could help control highly problematic and herbicide resistant weeds like Palmer Amaranth. They were also able to screen chemicals for their ability to overcome resistant forms of the selected enzyme. ENKOMPASS®’ ability to find selective molecules has significant implications for human and environmental safety not to mention efficacy against resistant pests. Enko is also working on new chemicals to control other crop-devastating pests such as Corn Rootworm. Their discoveries can enable partnerships with industry..
Enko’s toolbox of screening capabilities continually expands to better support hypothesis generation, which in time will help farmers to keep up with the pace of change in their environments, while maximizing their yields. In any case, the ability to generate a new wave of safe, effective crop protection chemicals would be extremely helpful for the future of the global food supply.
Terra Vera
There is another promising pest control approach being developed by a company called Terra Vera co-founded by CEO Carlos Perea and CTO Justin Sanchez. They are developing an innovative suite of chemistries based on biomimicry. They have found that they can combine naturally occurring amino acids and then electrically charge them with a piece of equipment to create solutions that are effective at controlling microbial pathogens.
Some variations are also showing very good efficacy on pests including the Varroa destructor mite which continues to plague the commercial honeybee industry. This chemistry is benign to more complex organisms and will quickly biodegrade into inert ingredients. This poses a challenge as the chemistry must be generated at time of use to be effective. The company seems confident that they have solutions and have announced a bee focused division, ApiVera. Their approach is to generate the chemistry on site, on demand, and then convert the liquid to fog to quickly saturate the hive. This method is very time efficient and should be appealing to the commercial beekeepers that treat thousands of hives per week.
The company also has plans to launch a crowdfund to simplify and cost reduce the technology to make it accessible to the hobbyist beekeeper that wants to reduce the chance of losing their hive to Varroa or other diseases.
Carbon Robotics
As they would say in Monty Python shows, “and now for something completely different.” How about zapping weeds with lasers? In addition to being a great way to attract young talent to an agricultural career this is turning out to be a great way to reduce the cost and undesirable toil of hand weeding – particularly in things like leafy vegetable crops. A company called Carbon Robotics, founded by Paul Mikesell, has developed a multi-row device pulled by a tractor and using it’s energy through power-take-off (PTO) to generate the electricity to run the lasers.
The main use is very early in the crop growth cycle when seedlings of both the crop and the weeds are first emerging. Their machine uses deep learning that can distinguish every species of weeds and over 100 crops down to a sub-millimeter scale and uses AI and computer vision targeting to know exactly where to zap the weeds at their key growing point or “meristem.” There is no flame, just a burst of visible light and a puff of steam/smoke when the weed is struck without any damage to the crop.
A case study conducted by Western Growers documented a weeding cost reduction in an organic leafy greens operation from $2.1 million for manual weeding crews to $1.3 million for a combination of manual weeding crews and Carbon Robotics’ LaserWeeder. This $800,000 savings in one year helped establish the ROI timeline for the LaserWeeder at roughly 320 eight hour shifts. The LaserWeeder can be used for pre-emergent weeds or early stage weeding options, and recently the capability to do thinning has been added. Walt Duflock, SVP of Innovation for Western Growers, says the case study shows that the LaserWeeder can perform weeding operations at economics that work for growers and Carbon Robotics are now available in multiple countries and can perform weeding on over 100 different crops.
Carbon Robotics announced on October 21, 2024, that it has raised $70 million in Series D financing led by new investor BOND with participation from existing investors NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Anthos Capital, Fuse Venture Capital, Ignition Partners, Revolution, Sozo Ventures, and Voyager Capital. This round brings total company funding to $157 million. As part of the financing, Mood Rowghani, general partner at BOND, will join Carbon Robotics’ Board of Directors.
Conclusion
Pests will continue to be a major challenge for agriculture, but these and other innovations will help to provide farmers with the tools they need to keep feeding the rest of us.