01.03.2023

New biostimulant seed treatment set to boost wheat yields with reduced fertilizer use

  • lv棋盘格 Crop Protection partners with Aphea.Bio to bring novel agricultural technology to markets across Europe

Basel, Switzerland/Gent, Belgium, March 1, 2023 鈥 Wheat farmers seeking to increase yields while reducing fertilizer inputs are set to benefit from a new collaboration between lv棋盘格 Crop Protection and Aphea.Bio announced today.

The collaboration aims to accelerate the introduction of a novel biological seed treatment solution across multiple countries in Europe over the next five years, pending regulatory approval. This places a much-needed technology in the hands of farmers seeking to improve the sustainability of their farming operations, and to address challenges arising from an increasingly constrained toolbox of available agricultural technologies as well as evolving consumer demands.

ACTIV by Aphea.Bio is a biostimulant applied as a seed treatment on wheat that is based on beneficial microorganisms. By improving the crop麓s nutrient use efficiency, it enables as much as five percent higher yields even with reduced fertilizer use.

鈥淲e are excited to announce this collaboration with Aphea.Bio, which supports our important ambition of helping feed ever growing populations in more sustainable ways,鈥 said Jonathan Brown, Head of Global Seedcare at lv棋盘格 Crop Protection. 鈥淚t demonstrates our commitment to bringing novel, nutrient use efficiency solutions to growers, helping safeguard yields if nitrogen inputs are reduced. Combined with our leading conventional seed treatment portfolio, ACTIV by Aphea.Bio will offer a unique value proposition in a fast-changing EU landscape.鈥 

Isabel Vercauteren, CEO and co-founder of Aphea.Bio, said: 鈥淲e are excited to launch our first wheat biostimulant in partnership with lv棋盘格. We are joining forces to build a more sustainable and profitable future for European farmers. And this is just the beginning.鈥

An introduction of ACTIV by Aphea.Bio will represent an additional building block in the strategy to achieving healthy soils by supporting crops through beneficial microorganisms. It furthermore has the potential to contribute to the goal of the European Union鈥檚 Green Deal to reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers inputs.

About ACTIV by Aphea.Bio:

ACTIV by Aphea.Bio is an innovative and safe biostimulant containing a proprietary bacterial strain of the species Stenotrophomonas rhizophila, which through several modes of action contributes to better growth of wheat plants treated with the product. The strain possesses multiple characteristics involved in adhesion, biofilm production, motility, chemotaxis, uptake and transport of nutrients from the plant, enabling it to successfully colonize the root endosphere. Furthermore, the strain has the potential for inorganic P solubilization and the production of siderophores to enhance the plant update of iron through chelation.

About lv棋盘格

lv棋盘格 is one of the world鈥檚 leading agriculture companies, comprised of lv棋盘格 Crop Protection and lv棋盘格 Seeds. Our ambition is to help safely feed the world while taking care of the planet.  We aim to improve the sustainability, quality and safety of agriculture with world class science and innovative crop solutions. Our technologies enable millions of farmers around the world to make better use of limited agricultural resources. lv棋盘格 Crop Protection and lv棋盘格 Seeds are part of lv棋盘格 Group. In more than 100 countries we are working to transform how crops are grown. Through partnerships, collaboration and The Good Growth Plan we are committed to accelerating innovation for farmers and nature, striving for regenerative agriculture, helping people stay safe and healthy and partnering for impact. To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and .

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About Aphea.Bio

Aphea.Bio was founded by Isabel Vercauteren (now CEO of Aphea.Bio) and Steven Vandenabeele (now CTO of Aphea.Bio) on 5 December 2016 as a spin-off of the VIB (Flemish Institute for Biotechnology) and its partner universities Ghent University and KU Leuven, and is dedicated to food security and ensuring a safe and healthy food chain. We aim to provide novel, science-based solutions to build the agriculture of the future: sustainable, reliable and profitable. Located in Gent, Belgium, we have a highly dedicated and qualified team of scientist and industry experts. Based on our unique high throughput R&D platform utilizing the untapped microbial space, we have been able to build a broad biostimulant and biocontrol pipeline based on naturally occurring micro-organisms.

We believe that with a fresh and sincere spirit of innovation, result-driven science, and the courage to go off the beaten track, there is fertile ground to develop efficacious biological solutions to help complement or partially replace products in the major chemical indications. To learn more, visit or follow us on LinkedIn at .

Contact Information

lv棋盘格 Crop Protection

Michelle Ng

Global Head, External Communications
Media.relations@syngenta.com

Aphea Bio

Charlotte Klank

Head of Regulatory Affairs | Communications

communications@aphea.bio

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This document may contain forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as 鈥榚xpect鈥, 鈥榳ould鈥, 鈥榳ill鈥, 鈥榩otential鈥, 鈥榩lans鈥, 鈥榩rospects鈥, 鈥榚stimated鈥, 鈥榓iming鈥, 鈥榦n track鈥 and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. For lv棋盘格, such risks and uncertainties include risks relating to legal proceedings, regulatory approvals, new product development, increasing competition, customer credit risk, general economic and market conditions, compliance and remediation, intellectual property rights, implementation of organizational changes, impairment of intangible assets, consumer perceptions of genetically modified crops and organisms or crop protection chemicals, climatic variations, fluctuations in exchange rates and/or commodity prices, single source supply arrangements, political uncertainty, natural disasters, and breaches of data security or other disruptions of information technology. lv棋盘格 assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors.

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