Oxitec Ltd, a leading developer of biological pest control solutions, announces the successful completion of the second large-scale pilot season of the Friendly™ fall armyworm. Following full commercial biosafety approval from Brazilian regulators in 2021, these two pilot seasons have enabled large-scale testing and validation of product operations and performance in commercial farm settings in two of Brazil’s major corn-growing regions.
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In this most recent pilot season, deployments of the Friendly™ fall armyworm were conducted in commercial corn fields in São Paulo state, in partnership with Lagoa Bonita Sementes, and in Brazil’s most important corn-growing state, Mato Grosso, in partnership with Fundação MT.
These operational pilot deployments move the Friendly™ fall armyworm solution closer towards commercialization in Brazil. Male Friendly™ fall armyworms were released across this recent corn-growing season over thousands of acres in commercial corn fields, enabling the product team to validate the effectiveness of the technology, validate per-product treatment areas and dosing, solidify distribution and shipping routes, and ramp up manufacturing.
The fall armyworm is a corn-destroying caterpillar that rapidly develops resistance to biotech corn varieties designed to control caterpillars. New biological solutions are urgently needed for more sustainable crop protection. In recent years, fall armyworm has spread beyond the Americas, and now imposes an economic burden of billions of dollars across Africa, Asia and Oceania. As described in a recent mathematical modelling study, releases of Oxitec’s male Friendly™ fall armyworm can provide a highly effective pest suppression tool, and can also delay the spread of resistance to biotech corn to prolong the effectiveness of these important crop protection tools for the long term.
For Grey Frandsen, Oxitec’s CEO, “This second season of farm-scale pilots is a major step towards delivering a transformative pest management tool to Brazilian farmers, with the potential to put sustainability at the heart of corn production in this world-leading agricultural economy. Farmers are excited about our technology and about the benefits we offer to growers’ livelihoods and the environment, especially in the face of climate change, growing challenges for biotech crops, and the absence of other effective tools. We’re working at pace to get this product ready for scale-up, and this set of successful pilots at a commercial scale is a major step forward.”