Project description
A green solution for the growing problem of fungal infections
Fungal diseases pose major threats to staple and horticultural crops, wiping out more than 125 million tonnes each year. Disease control is based mainly on breeding resistant crop varieties along with the use of chemical fungicides but these chemicals decrease soil fertility and lower crop yields. The EU-funded BIOAVENGER project will develop a natural, environmentally-friendly method that treats emerging and resistant fungal mould and rot infections in trees, vines and horticultural crops. The BioAvenger is applied into the soil like fertiliser. The new product will be marketed to retailers and distributors of pesticide products, as well as horticultural farmers and arborists.
Objective
Over 125 million tonnes of staple and horticultural crops are wiped out each year due to fungal infections. For example, over 5% of Europe’s vineyards are annually lost to fungi. New, ever-more-powerful chemical fungicides are being used on crops, leading to a rise in excessive use of aggressive chemical fungicides, such as copper sulphate, which accumulate in the soil. This ultimately results in decreased soil fertility and low crop yields as well as harmful fungicide entry into the food chain. In turn, the latter is pushing a shift from chemical fungicides to safer bio-fungicides through legislative (e.g. Directive 2009/128/EC) as well as consumer concern and demand for use of safer methods (i.e. organic food market CAGR of 14.8%). Our innovation, BioAvenger, is a new, natural, environmentally-friendly, yet effective bio-fungicidal method. BioAvenger treats emerging and resistant fungal mould and rot infections in trees, vines and horticultural crops! BioAvenger is applied into the soil like any fertiliser, making its incorporation into current agricultural practices easy at less than 80% of the price of available bio-fungicides. We, MycoSolutions, are a leading Swiss producer of natural fungi-based products for plant and wood protection. Today we boast a team of 12 researchers and plant enthusiasts (7 women and 5 men). Europe’s exploding bio-fungicide market, led by Germany, Spain, France and Italy, is where we will target retailers and distributors of pesticide products (B2B sales) and horticultural farmers and arborists (B2C sales). Using our pilot range of bio-fungicides to prepare our market for BioAvenger, we have already established a 200-client base in the DACH region and Italy. BioAvenger will become one of our main revenue streams and allow us to achieve a bio-fungicide market share of 2.3% by 2026, followed by sustained turnover growth of at least 30% in the next years.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticultureviticulture
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseases
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturearboriculture
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
9014 ST GALLEN
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.