One of the greatest challenges facing the agricultural sector is how to cope with pests that destroy crops. Indeed, up to 30% of agricultural produce is routinely lost due to pest damage. Traditional chemical insecticides suffer from many drawbacks, including the rapid development of pest resistance. Moreover, chemical insecticides are neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly, and global markets, driven by regulation as well as consumer concerns, are increasingly rejecting the use of chemicals on food products.
Scientists around the world are therefore racing to develop more effective and sustainable crop protection solutions to ensure that the global food supply can continue feeding a rapidly growing population.
Precision bioinsecticides
The Israeli AgTech company IBI-Ag is a pioneer in the field of next-generation insecticides that are biological rather than chemical—and therefore safer, sustainable and more efficient than existing alternatives. Founded in 2017, the company has developed a new class of biological insecticides with a fundamentally different mode of action. IBI-Ag's first generation of innovative biological insecticides, currently in advanced field trials in the United States and Israel, consist of single domain antibodies that are effective against key insect pest species.
"Our disruptive IP is based on insect targets validated in vivo with an extensive library of single domain antibodies," affirms IBI-Ag CEO Dr. Arnon Heyman, adding that, "our bioinsecticides are built on protein-based active ingredients, engineered to bind with precision to specific target proteins within the insect's digestive system, disrupting essential biological functions with minimal off-target effects."
Heyman is proud that his company is successfully advancing the registration of its first product, and that IBI-Ag's bioinsecticides are demonstrating good efficacy in the field.
Groundbreaking use of AI
This year, IBI-Ag reached a milestone with the development of the world's first proof-of-concept for an AI-driven bioinsecticide protein design platform. "We are probably the first bioinsecticide company in the world to successfully design insecticidal mini-proteins using AI," says Dr. Heyman. "Rather than developing proteins in a lab, which takes a long time, we are leveraging our IP and now using artificial intelligence to design insecticidal proteins de novo. we then test and validate these candidates in the lab. By using an AI-assisted de novo approach, the development process now only takes as little as a few months from in silico (on the computer) to in vivo (in a living organism) testing," he explains.
This innovative methodology is a true paradigm shift for the bioinsecticide industry, since it is so much faster and more efficient, as well as sustainable. By leveraging IBI-Ag's proprietary IP, new proteins are rapidly discovered and validated based on vast amounts of data, thereby opening up many new markets by targeting insect challenges that were previously unattainable with naturally occurring proteins. The new methodology may also lower production costs and increase product stability and resiliency.
For more information, visit www.ibi-ag.com
Partnered with IBI-Ag
