Fine Chemicals

Quest for growth

Are biopesticides ready to take off? Andrew Warmington reports from CropWorld 2011

Biopesticides - naturally occurring products derived from materials such as plants, bacteria, viruses and minerals that have inherently pesticidal properties - clearly have enormous promise. Yet there was considerable disagreement about their future growth at the CropWorld 2011 conference, which was held in London last November.

For Ashish Malik, senior VP of global marketing at AgraQuest in Davis, California, one of the most important suppliers, biopesticides are crucial to meeting the challenges of feeding 9 billion people sustainably by 2050. However, Dr Steve Lisansky, CEO of CPL Business Consultants, publisher of a recent report on the world market for biopesticides, cautioned that there have been false dawns before.

Biopesticides, said Malik, can contribute to the three key challenges of sustainable farming facing the world today. First, they promote food quality in that they are less toxic than conventional pesticides, do not contain regulated residues, improve pack-out, shippability and shelf-life and promote plant health.

They also increase productivity when used alone or in combination with conventional pesticides as part of an integrated pest management programme by improving control of pests and diseases and boosting crop yield. Finally, they have low environmental impact, as they are made from renewable sources and are non-persistent, while being highly targeted to specific pests yet gentle on beneficial insects.

Other important bonuses of biopesticides, according to Malik, include their multiple modes of action, enabling them to preserve the effectiveness of pesticides in season-long control programmes, and their high level of worker safety. Generally, they do not leave regulated residues, so they help growers to meet maximum residue limits and organic food standards.

According to Lisansky, the total world biopesticides market in 2008, including microbials, botanicals, semiochemicals and macro-organics, was worth about $1 billion. Natural biochemicals, which CPL omitted from its study, would have added another $500 million or so.

Within this, the most significant part was the microbials, including bacteria, viruses and fungi, which accounted for $396 million. Those based on B. thuringiensis accounted for just over half of this, though the proportion was down from well over 90% in the much smaller market of the 1990s.

Consumption of biopesticides based on B. thuringiensis has grown by about a third since 2004-5, but others have grown much faster still. Other bacteria account for about 33%, fungi for most of the remaining 16%.

Malik - Biopesticides help meet sustainable farming challenges

Regionally, the biopesticides market divides approximately one third each in North America and Asia/Australasia, one sixth each in Europe and Latin America. They are strongest as a proportion of the total market in North America (1.52%) and Asia/Australasia (1.42%). On average they represent 1% of the market but well below this figure in Europe where, Lisansky said, "adoption has been a bit of an uphill struggle".

Clearly the biopesticides market has been outpacing the crop protection market as a whole - 10%/year as against about 2%, according to Thierry Merckling, AgraQuest's Lyon-based European managing director. However, as Lisansky noted, the proverbial hockey stick curve has yet to be seen, nor will it be seen: the story will remain one of continued, steady growth.

"No magic fairy dust is going to be sprinkled on this market to lead to rapid growth," he said. "The factors that sparked the growth of biopesticide consumption in the 1970s - the failure to develop enough new chemistries, consumer distrust of chemicals and so on - are still there but progress is still glacially slow."

Some 175 companies have been involved in developing biopesticides in the past 35 years, Lisansky continued, including some mainly active in crop protection, fertilisers, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, as well as venture capitalists. Of these, most have failed to make a profit and have given up; only parts of Sandoz and Abbott Laboratories that are now Certis and Valent BioSciences have done well.

"Common mistakes include the belief that biopesticides are easy to find and cheap to make," said Lisansky. "Too many firms think they are smarter and quicker than others or that expertise in marketing means that their new technology is bound to succeed. In fact, 'bulk up and sell' is about 90% of the real work and expense in this field, R&D only about 10%."

All too often, he concluded, firms have built production capacities or capabilities that either do not work or which underestimate the costs of production. Many have little idea of the costs or the long-term corporate commitment required to succeed in biopesticides, or fail at the unglamourous side of making product cost-efficiently. "Corporate expertise in agrochemicals is not enough to succeed in biopesticides," he warned.

AgraQuest trials its own products then takes them to market via partners

AgraQuest, for one, has certainly been around for a long time in this market - 16 years in fact - and has always focused on using its own R&D, including field trials, to bring new biopesticides to the market via a science-based approach.  In recent years, however, Malik said in an interview at CropWorld that the business model has changed to one of "having a go-to partner" with whom to get the product to the market.

There are only six multinational R&D-based agrochemicals companies in the world and AgraQuest has worked with most of them for specific products and/or end uses in specific national or regional markets, as well as with some of the stronger Tier II companies. "We don't want to put all of our products with one company, we want to complement the strengths of our global marketing," Malik said.

The key agreements are headed by one with BASF for the distribution of the company's flagship products Serenade in all countries outside the NAFTA region. Serenade is based on the patented QST 713 strain of B. subtilis, which provides over 30 different lipopeptides that work synergistically to destroy disease pathogens and provide antimicrobial activity in vegetables, fruit, nuts and vine crops.

On the eve of CropWorld 2011, AgraQuest signed an agreement with DuPont for the development and distribution in France of DPX RNP31, a new biopesticide based on the patented microbial active ingredient, B. pumilus QST 2808, which controls Sclerotinia and other diseases in oilseed rape, as part of DuPont's broad acre crop fungicide range. This product was submitted for Annex I approval in late 2010 and AgraQuest hopes that it will be approved in late 2012.

The deal was the first in Europe for products based on QST 2808, but others are already commercially available in the US, Mexico and Brazil, among other markets. Moreover, said Malik, "it is the first true partnership with a major company on a broad acre - as opposed to specialty - crop. We are now looking for other partnerships in other broad acre crops like corn and soybeans."

AgraQuest is now looking at different proposals for partnerships specific to other crops and countries for this product. Malik expects to have three or four different European partnerships, unlike the single one with BASF covering Serenade.

AgraQuest has developed a range of fungicides and one insecticide

Announcements are also expected in early 2012 about European partnerships for the company's first insecticide Requiem, which targets all of the lifecycle stages of sucking pests like whiteflies, thrips, mites and aphids, with what is claimed to be a unique mode of action. The product has been launched in Mexico and Israel, is registered in the US and has passed its completeness checks under Annex I in the EU.

In addition, the company extended its agreement with Bayer Animal Health, making Bayer the exclusive distributor of its Sympatic brand of QST 713 in certain countries for use in poultry, where it enhances digestion and offers protection from diseases like necrotic enteritis. As part of Bayer's Baymix Grobig BS feed additive, this is already on the market in India, Korea and Thailand, with other Asian and Latin American markets set to follow.

At the Agrow Awards held in conjunction with CropWorld 2011, AgraQuest's Serenade Soil, the first soil fungicide to be based on the QST 713 strain, won Best New Biopesticide, ahead of Bioferm's Bofector botyricide based on two strains of A. pullulans for grey mould on grapevines and Valent's ProTone, which uses a naturally occurring plant hormone to enhance the natural development of anthocyanin pigment in grapes.

Serenade Soil, which was formally launched in early 2010, is said to provide both chemical protection against various soil diseases in fruit and vegetables by a combined fungicidal and bactericidal activity and plant growth promotion. It was also nominated for Best New Crop Production or Trait at the Awards, a category that was won by Syngenta's sedaxane, the first fungicidal active to be tailored specifically for seed treatment use.

In addition to extending applications for Serenade Soil and other existing actives, AgraQuest has two new fungicides, one new miticide, one new bactericide and one new nematicide in the pipeline. So, all in all and with about 30% growth achieved in 2011, Malik and Merckling are optimistic about future prospects.

"There is a lot of excitement in general about what biopesticides can do as agrochemicals companies look more and more to sustainability," Malik said. "And we see them as essentially complementary to rather than competing with traditional agrochemicals. It is a hard market to get into, but with 'low chemical' offers like ours, I can see very strong growth ahead."

 

 

From Online Issue: February 2012