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leveraging Ginkgo’s ultra-high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities, AgBiome aims to unlock the even higher performance of its microbial strain pipeline

AgBiome and Ginkgo Bioworks, announced a partnership to optimise the performance of products in AgBiome’s pipeline of agricultural biologicals. Organisations developing next-generation agricultural inputs can access Ginkgo’s platform to accelerate the discovery and deployment of new products. By leveraging Ginkgo’s ultra-high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities, AgBiome aims to provide growers with new and improved live microbial strain products.

The biological crop protection market has significantly grown in recent years as growers have increasingly sought effective and sustainable alternatives to synthetic pest control products. By leveraging Ginkgo’s suite of advanced biology tools, AgBiome aims to enhance the breadth and efficacy of novel biological products.

“We believe we can identify improved variants at a massive scale, which can help deliver more potent agricultural biologicals and bring the next generation of products to market,” said Magalie Guilhabert, Head of Ag Biologicals, Ginkgo Bioworkas. “We are thrilled to work with an industry leader like AgBiome as we seek to optimize live microbial strain products in their pipeline and provide even better solutions to growers around the world.”

“AgBiome is committed to creating the most effective crop protection products, and we are always looking for new technologies to enable better performance,” said Scott Uknes, Co-founder and Co-CEO of AgBiome. “We are excited to utilise Ginkgo’s capabilities in ultra-high-throughput assay development to evolve the next generation of biologicals as we continue to provide growers with improved product efficacy.”

AgBiome’s crop protection products, discovered using its proprietary Genesis platform, are based on natural microbial strains that have undergone extensive testing and evaluation to ensure consistent performance. Ginkgo’s ultra-high throughput encapsulated screening technology makes it possible to search through up to 1 million strain variants in a single run and select the best-performing candidates for further development. Built on nanoliter encapsulation technology, Ginkgo’s screening capabilities provide nanoscale growth and assay compartments and make it possible to greatly reduce the screening time for large libraries.

leveraging Ginkgo's ultra-high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities,

Inputs

The increased application flexibility on the new label will allow growers to apply Howler at any time of day and any crop stage

Howler fungicide, the first product from agricultural innovator AgBiome, has been granted EPA approval for an updated label with expanded crops, disease targets and application flexibility. This new label brings the addition of 20 new crops, new pathogens and new use patterns for both aerial and seed treatment applications and exciting news on pollinator safety.

Even more specialty crop growers will be able to unleash the power of Howler on their soil-borne and foliar diseases with Howler’s expanded label featuring key crops like hops, sugar beets, oilseed crops, and ornamentals. 

Howler’s list of targeted pathogens grows three-fold with this new label, inclusive of those listed on a FIFRA Sec 2ee label issued in 2021. The updated label adds to Howler’s expansive list of pathogens that frequently affect high-value crops, including downy and powdery mildews, rusts, and Botryosphaeria.

The increased application flexibility on the new label will allow growers to apply Howler at any time of day and any crop stage. This new label also brings the removal of a previous caution statement around application in the presence of active pollinators, officially confirming Howler as pollinator safe. 

The increased application flexibility on the new

Inputs

AgBiome’s research is focused on developing biological pest control solutions for the following crops: maize, sorghum, banana and yam.

AgBiome, the leader in developing innovative products from the Earth’s microbial communities, announced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has continued their granted support, funding phase 2 research aimed to develop novel, efficacious, safe and low cost of production microbial pesticides (fungal control and nematicide) for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan African countries. AgBiome’s research is focused on developing biological pest control solutions for the following crops: maize, sorghum, banana and yam.

The overarching goal of this project is to leverage AgBiome’s scientific expertise, infrastructure, and previous success developing biological fungicides to develop microbial solutions that will benefit small-holder farmers in African countries.

AgBiome has successfully achieved milestones in phase 1 of this project, including:

  • Successfully developing microbial screening assays against the target diseases
  • Identification of 100 microbial strains with confirmed activity against one or more of the target fungal diseases and 25 strains prioritised for further evaluation.
  • Identification of 20 nematicidal bacterial strains able to control the root knot nematodes (RKN) on-plant and three lead strains prioritized for further evaluation.

In phase 2 of this research, AgBiome will focus on the evaluation of the strains prioritised in the phase 1 of the project under appropriate field conditions and select microbes with the best efficacy.

“Upon completion of phase 2, AgBiome will provide production-ready lead and backup strains with proven efficacy to control a spectrum of fungal diseases and nematodes in the key sub-Saharan African crops,” said Dave Ingham, Pre-product Manager at AgBiome.

AgBiome's research is focused on developing biological