The AgriCell bioencapsulation technology provides the technical benefits of stabilizing AIs (active ingredients) for easy formulation, protecting AIs from environmental stresses, and providing a more controlled, long-term delivery of AIs to the plant microenvironment. Altogether, the technical benefits of the AgriCell ensures that more AI reaches the crop and stays there in its active form for longer. Thyme oil (small molecule) and ds-RNA (large molecule) have served as model active ingredients to demonstrate the AgriCell’s advantages over ECs (emulsified concentrates) and plastic microcapsules.  We have successfully optimized our encapsulation process to develop the biofungicide FunThyme, which has &gt;70% mass loading of thyme oil and controlled release properties. We demonstrated the efficacy of the FunThyme as a stand-alone treatment to control fungal disease on different ornamental crops, wheat, soybean, and grape vines (Figure A). Results suggest that the FunThyme can serve as a stand-alone treatment with broad-spectrum control that can work just as well as the commercial standard for each disease. We also demonstrated the potential for the FunThyme to be applied effectively as a rotational partner that can outcompete the current conventional gold standards in strawberry field trials that experience high disease pressure.<br/>Additionally, we have demonstrated that AgriCell-encapsulated dsRNA (AGC-dsRNA) is a cost-effective and scalable platform for dsRNA production, which shields dsRNAs from degradation by RNase A, thus improving their stability. Topical application of AGC-dsRNAs prevented disease progression in strawberries for 12 days under greenhouse conditions, whereas naked-dsRNA could not provide the same degree of protection (Figure B). Our results also provided evidence that AGC-dsRNAs had a high degree of species specificity and is amenable to large-scale production and open-field applications.

AgriCell: A novel bio-based microencapsulation technology to improve crop protection

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ACS Fall 2022

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