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PheroSyn

Our Tech Spotlight for this month is PheroSyn, a new start-up that are producing high value, not currently available, insect pheromones, for supply to the agribusiness sector for sustainable pest management.

PheroSyn are a fellow tenant at the Rothamsted campus in Hertfordshire, UK & we recently met with Daniel Bahia, Business Manager & Co-founder, to find out more about what PheroSyn are up to.  The company is a recent spin-out from Rothamsted Research.  The company’s vision, is for their products to be used in order to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture and help mitigate climate change.

The PheroSyn team have more  than 40 years experience combined in this field & have found ways to synthesise and scale-up production of some of the “not currently available” pheromones.  They are focussing on midge pests targeting cereal and legume crops  as well as fruit orchards .  PheroSyn have developed a small portfolio of products and are also continuing with trials to quantify the benefit of their use.

The pheromones are typically used as part of an integrated pest management system, helping farmers identify when and where pests are, in order to be smarter with any pesticide use.  By using pheromones farmers can reduce pesticide use, reduce their costs and reduce their climate impact on the planet by reducing pesticide production and on-farm fuel usage of pesticide application.

PheroSyn have been successful in getting initial funding.  Towards the end of 2020, the company received an award as part of Innovate UK’s £134 million Sustainable Innovation Fund (SIF) to help development of its new pear midge pest insect pheromones.   The company has also benefitted from being part of the SHAKE Climate Change programme, the consortium of leading scientific research and academic institutions formed to identify innovative solutions to tackle climate change linked to the agri-food sector.

PheroSyn are now keen to get their current products out to the market and also develop commercial partnerships to provide custom development and volume supply of insect pheromones.

We wish PheroSyn every success, in the next stage of their development!