Agricultural pesticides are known to be harmful to the environment and to human health, and pests have become resistant to them over time. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) produced by microbes has emerged as a promising biological alternative to traditional chemical pesticides. Not only is dsRNA less energy-intensive, it can also target specific pests.
But scaling up dsRNA production has been a challenge, and only a few microbes have been used and optimized to produce it. A new collaboration between researchers in the Agile BioFoundry and Varada Agriculture will aim to bring dsRNA to scale.
Varada Agriculture has been studying dsRNA’s effectiveness against powdery mildew, a disease that affects grapevine berries. Chemical fungicides are losing their effectiveness against this disease, creating a need for an alternative pesticide.
“The dsRNA production methods we used for our past and current lab studies are not sustainable,” said Mary Wildermuth, co-founder and chief scientific advisor at Varada Agriculture. “We need an efficient and cost-effective means for producing commercial-scale quantities of dsRNA.”
The two teams will take an iterative approach to efficiently optimize and engineer a microbial host for dsRNA production and create a scalable microbial production method.
The global market for RNA-based biopesticides could reach over $30 billion annually.
“An effective system for producing dsRNA for agriculture could be transformative,” Wildermuth said.