| Project Detail |
Dust BioSolutions (DBS) is a German start-up company and the “no.1 address for biological binders”. Its mission is to develop, produce, and industrialize biological binders to improve sustainability, profitability and innovation of established industries globally with the help of biotechnology. DBS has developed proprietary and patented technologies (German patent: DE102018103314; EU patent application: PCT/EP2019/053722), based on a bio-geochemical process that solidifies most permeable materials, called Microbiologically induced calcium carbonate precipitation.
In 2016, DBS decided to focus its product development on weed control and management in the agriculture sector. BioWeedControl, which comes either in a solid (powder) or in a liquid form, depending on the type of application, has been developed to a TRL6. DBS has multiple year collaboration agreements on-going with different partners worldwide, for product development and test implementation (25 large scale test fields on-going as of May 2019). Test fields carried out so far (test partners: agrochemical companies, herbicide producers, i.e. BASF, Neudorff) show that BioWeedControl has same performance as the most commonly used chemical herbicides, excellent effectiveness, also through additional functionalities (i.e. erosion control), and high efficiency (>90%).
DBS expects BioWeedControl to become “the” solution to weed management and control in the agriculture sector worldwide. Competition from weeds, which can directly or indi-rectly damage agriculture in general, is one of the major factors reducing crop yield and farmers’ income (causing 50% to 70% of yield losses). This issue is worsened by the grow-ing number of weeds becoming herbicide-resistant. BioWeedControl is the only product in the market which can efficiently and environmentally friendly solve the problem of weed control in the agriculture industry, and overcoming all the weaknesses of currently availa-ble agrochemical products. |
