Finding alternatives is great, bringing them up to the market is better.

As you already know, there is a current shift on the market of plant protection solutions. More and more substances are not renewed due to not passing the cut-off criteria of acceptability. This brings uncertainty to growers that are seeing their usual tools removed from them.

In the meantime, alternatives are identified and designed, first as potential replacement for the withdrawn substances but most importantly, to a larger extent, as tools to define new crop production models.

A concern arises when the budget and timelines for the deployment of these solutions are up to the growers.

Removing a substance can take less than 3 years between conclusions of the evaluation from EFSA and the last date of authorized use. On the contrary, when it comes to regulated biocontrol products, it takes 7 to 10 years to get the registration and without mentioning the time needed to get the innovation accepted by the end users.

Most of the innovations are supported by small companies which struggle to finance the – at least – 1 million € worth-registration dossier without turnover for a decade.

The french government in the frame of its EcoPhyto plan has proposed a solution last year that now comes into force. The PARSADA initiative is an action plan to finance the development and deployment of alternatives identified in the response to the potential withdrawal of 75 active substances. This batch of substances was identified at risk due to concerns on their toxicology and ecotoxicology. With 146 millions € allocated to finance this program, it is, fairly said, one of the most ambitious plans currently in Europe on the subject. The call for tender is open until the end of the year for this first round with a budget of 7.5 million€ per project supported.

Staphyt has an extensive experience in bringing alternative biocontrol solutions to the market with the industry along with the demonstration in actual farmers’ program of the best positioning of these solutions.

If you need support to quantify the budget to consider for:

• defining a regulatory positioning,
• generating all the required regulatory studies (efficacy, analytical methods, phys-chem, toxicology, ecotoxicology),
• and program all the relevant demonstration trials.

 Staphyt teams can help you with your projects: contact@staphyt.com