October 7, 2021

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Enko, a Massachusetts-based company that develops novel, next-generation crop protection solutions, has partnered with Australian agrochemical company Nufarm to develop new herbicide solutions for the Australian, U.S., and EU markets. 

This partnership is coming at a critical time. 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 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.”

Currently, farmers are mainly relying on chemical herbicides that haven’t changed much in decades. And when examining the total pesticide market, more than 80 percent is composed of off-patent products, with 22 active crop protection product ingredients going off patent by 2030, demonstrating the need to reimagine how agricultural inputs are approached.

Globally, more than 600 pests have developed resistance to crop protection methods being currently employed, representing economic losses equity to $10 billion in the U.S. alone. Compounding this challenge, exacerbated by climate change, new crop diseases are spreading into previously unaffected regions.  

This pressure could be compounded in Australia, where recent research found that the country may have reached its peak average for growing crops, noted Heard in a company blog post announcing the partnership. This conclusion indicates that there is no additional land on which to plant – an all-too-familiar scenario in a growing number of geographies where wildfires and other ecological threats are intensifying.

Addressing this issue, Dr. Stephen Powles, Enko scientific advisory board member, farmer, and a renowned plant scientist at the University of Western Australia, noted, “We must not sacrifice our remaining untouched forests and other natural landscapes. Rather, we need to lift productivity on our existing precious crop land. This means controlling yield-robbing pests and diseases–which requires new, highly effective and environmentally safe crop protection chemicals.”

However, despite the critical need for new solutions, it currently takes 10-12 years on average for scientists and companies to discover and develop new crop protection products. But, by adopting and applying development methodologies from the pharma sector, Enko has the ability to slash the process timeline by half.

Founded in 2017 and incubated by Anterra Capital, Enko takes a revolutionary target-based approach, using its proprietary technology platform, combining technologies like DNA-encoding libraries with machine learning and structural biology, to rapidly discover and develop novel, safe, and economical crop protection solutions.

Through its platform that uses predictive analytical tools and advanced pharmaceutical discovery, Enko’s approach allows scientists to screen more than 140 billion molecules simultaneously to identify unexpected herbicide candidates at scale otherwise impossible.

“Applying machine learning and artificial intelligence models to our extensive data sets, our predictive analytics tools decrease design cycles and increase our success rate in finding safe, novel, effective small molecule compounds,” Heard told GAI News. “Our products will promote the economic and performance lift for other technologies that are essential for sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices.”

This partnership will leverage Enko’s cutting-edge discovery and development capabilities to rapidly advance the suite of solutions for the world’s most challenging superweeds. This work will be conducted in parallel by teams focused on expediting the process of generating lead herbicide candidates.

“As global challenges continue to evolve and intensify, the value of agriculture becomes undeniably clear,” said Greg Hunt, managing director and CEO, Nufarm. “The ongoing impacts of issues such as climate change and population growth require new solutions that deliver sustainable feedstocks, without placing additional pressure on the natural environment and our finite resources.”

Hunt continued, “Nufarm has a long history of innovation and an unwavering commitment to delivering solutions tailored to the specific needs of farmers, having recently developed a global oilseed, Omega-3 and advanced biofuel technology platform. As we grow, we’re thrilled to have a like-minded partner in Enko and the investment we have made in Enko will help advance new technologies and innovation within the agricultural supply chain.”

– 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 Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.