July 27, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

It was back in October 2021 when Enko, a Massachusetts-based developer of novel, next-generation crop protection solutions, announced it had partnered with Australian agrochemical company Nufarm to develop new herbicide solutions for the Australian, U.S., and EU markets. 

This partnership has come into being at a critical time. Currently, farmers are strictly limited in their options, mainly relying on chemical herbicides that haven’t changed much in decades. As climate change worsens and ecological conditions become more severe, popular crops such as coffee, bananas, and oranges are being threatened by extreme heat, drought, diseases, and increasingly resilient superweeds. This scenario is placing farmers in a vulnerable reality, and in the case of commodities like soybeans, is creating uncertainty for entire global supply chains and trade.

Jacqueline Heard, CEO of Enko, told GAI News in an interview in September 2020, “We need to move beyond the ‘spray and pray’ approach of the past to meet the safety and sustainability needs of today’s farmers, consumers, and regulators by building in safety measures at the very start of the development cycle to stay ahead of future needs. Enko aims to lead the charge in making safer, lower use rate products that provide good returns for farmers the industry standard.”

Enko expressed that significant funding is shifting toward independent startups as industry players are distancing themselves from outdated solutions from legacy ag companies that have plateaued in both effectiveness and innovation.

Reflective of this shift, Nufarm is expanding their partnership with Enko to bring innovative products to core markets by leading a $70 million Series C, and lifting the company’s overall valuation to $320 million. 

Additional participants in the funding round included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Anterra Capital, Taher Gozal, Eight Roads Ventures, Finistere Ventures, Novalis LifeSciences, Germin8 Ventures, TO Ventures Food, Endeavor8, Alumni Ventures Group and Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund.

“Nufarm aims to bring the latest seed and chemical technologies to bear in the field, helping our customers overcome crop threats and be able to ‘grow a better tomorrow’—which impacts all of us,” said Greg Hunt, managing director and CEO, Nufarm.

“We were early investors in Enko and have followed the performance of their pipeline in the lab and field over the last two years with increased interest,” said Hunt, who explained, “As an agricultural innovator, Nufarm’s strategy is to partner with like-minded companies who recognize that innovation and technology are the future for sustainable agriculture practices. We were delighted to invest in this Series C financing round.”

Enko CEO Jacqueline Heard addressed the multi-faceted challenges being faced by the world’s farmers in a recent blog post, citing the emergence of resistant superweeds, governments moving to reduce and/or ban existing available crop protection options, and climate volatility leading to harvest uncertainty, which in-turn can result in higher food prices and social upheaval.

“Stark examples of this are all around us,” noted Heard. “We need look no further than last week’s devastating heat wave in Europe to understand the seriousness of climate change’s impacts on global food prices and security. On the other side of the globe, Sri Lanka’s sudden shift to all-organic farming in 2021 is a major contributor to the country’s current crises. It also demonstrates the economic and social consequences when leaders ignore growers’ needs.”

With the capital from this funding round, Enko plans to advance its product pipeline of crop protection chemistries that target critical pests and weeds via novel pathways, with a focus on its herbicide candidate which advanced from discovery to demonstrated field performance in only 15 months – a fraction of the time it usually takes global ag companies to achieve.

It also will expand its ENKOMPASS technology platform, which combines DNA-encoded library screening with machine learning and structure-based design to rapidly discover new, better performing, and more targeted chemistries.

Through these methods, since its launch in 2017, Enko has generated hundreds of leading molecules across all categories of crop protection, and its current product pipeline is led by a range of herbicides that are demonstrating breakthrough performance compared to industry standards, such as glyphosate. 

“Reliance on outdated chemistries has led to rampant resistance that is threatening farmer livelihoods and our food supply,” said Heard. “Enko’s digital platform massively increases the scale and discovery rate for new solutions, screening out off-target organisms from the get-go. The result is bringing safe and effective products to growers better, faster and cheaper. The need for this innovation has never been more urgent.”

This target-based approach had enabled Enko to generate its industry-leading discoveries in about half the time, with fewer resources, compared to conventional R&D methodologies. And to drive industry momentum amid stalled R&D, Enko is collaborating with Syngenta and Bayer on promising new protection options. 

“Innovative thinking has been—and will continue to be—the engine that provides differentiated, sustainable solutions and broader choices for farmers and consumers,” said Shaun Selness, head of emerging technologies at Bayer Crop Science, in July 2021. “Our work with Enko helps us to accelerate the discovery of the latest crop protection technologies.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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