BioPhero was founded in 2016 with a clear objective – to commercialize an innovative technology platform for cost-efficient production of insect pheromones in order to expand their use in agriculture at large.
In 2022, BioPhero was acquired by FMC Corporation to accelerate our ability to bring highly advanced pheromone insect control technology to growers around the world.
Our journey continues!
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Founder Irina Borodina started BioPhero as a biotechnology spin-out from the Technical University of Denmark
Developing a new manufacturing platform based on yeast fermentation rather than conventional chemical synthesis
Yeast Fermentation Lowers the Manufacturing Cost for Pheromones
Insect pheromones can be used to control insect pests by disrupting their mating, offering farmers an environmentally friendly supplement to chemical solutions. But the high cost of pheromones has long been a barrier, restricting their use to high-value fruit and vegetable crops.
By using a combination of yeast strain modification, fermentation, and chemical processing, it is possible to produce insect pheromones at an industrial scale. A lower cost makes it viable to use pheromones to control insect pests in field and row crops such as corn, rice, and cotton.
By copying nature’s way of making pheromones, yeast can be modified to produce pheromones exactly like insects do
When grown in large bioreactors, the yeast cells multiply rapidly, collectively producing pheromone in large quantities
Yeast fermentation is scalable both in terms of quantity and types of pheromones, making it an excellent platform for producing pheromones for a wide range of insect pests in many different crops.
