The AgriCell: A novel, biodegradable delivery technology for enhanced crop protection with minimized environmental toxicity

Project SummaryTitle: The AgriCell: A novel biodegradable delivery technology for enhanced crop protectionwith minimized environmental toxicityPD: Sergio CarballoInstitution: AgroSpheres Inc.As the global demand for food increases farmers continue to rely on agrochemicals to protecttheir crops against pathogens. While conventional fungicides are relatively effective in protectingagainst fungal pathogens they come with a range of problems. Firstly many fungicides havestability issues and degrade prematurely upon environmental stresses. Fungicide formulationsalso have public health and ecological risks due to their unmitigated off-target drift. Whileemulsified concentrates or plastic microcapsules can overcome many of these issues thesetechnologies come with their own limitations and risks. Therefore there is dire need for abiologically-derived microencapsulation technology that is able to improve fungicide efficacyand enhance crop production while also reducing the ecological footprint of agriculture.With this proposal AgroSpheres aims to utilize their novel scalable bioencapsulationtechnology the AgriCell to improve the efficacy of a common fungicide Prothioconazole. Theresearch efforts of this project will focus on encapsulating stabilizing and achieving controlledrelease of Prothioconazole in lab and greenhouse conditions. With greenhouse trialsAgroSpheres plans to demonstrate that the AgriCell-Prothioconazole product can achieve equalor improved efficacy as the current commercial standard for Prothioconazole.AgroSpheres anticipates that in Phase I it will demonstrate that the AgriCell is an advantageouschemical application technology for agriculture because it enhances the application ofProthioconazole without relying on formulation ingredients that are known pollutants. Thus theAgriCell would become a commercially feasibly encapsulation technology for agrochemicalsand a viable alternative for formulations that currently rely on emulsification or microcapsules.