SBIR Phase I: Safe control of herbicide-resistant weeds with a novel natural bioherbicide platform

Harpe Bioherbicide Solutions, Inc., Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is in providing solutions to farmers who are facing the culmination of decades of herbicide resistant weed species evolving from applications of synthetic herbicides. Creation of herbicides which are effective, naturally produced, scalable, and deployed using the current agronomic practices could alter the foundations of crop production in the United States and around the world. In view of the projected 8% annual increase in global food and agriculture market, shrinking areas under cultivation that lead to the need for higher productivity per acre, and increasing demand for nutritional food items, the need for sustainable alternatives to current synthetic herbicides that do not promote herbicide resistant weeds is becoming clearer. Widespread adoption of the proposed technology is expected to benefit farmers and crop producers reducing societal strain, financial burden, and environmental stress from crop losses due to herbicide resistant weeds by eliminating these weeds through an environmentally safe method, without the use of excess fuel, time, equipment, and synthetic herbicides. The intellectual merit of this project is in developing a novel natural herbicide product that, when applied to herbicide resistant weeds, will cause seed or plant cell's membranes to degrade and lose integrity. Thus, the novel product is intended to work both as pre-emergent weed prevention and post-emergent weed control herbicide. The product will be an environmentally safe blend of natural plant extracts and excipients. The herbicide formulations will be sprayable onto soil or onto plant leaves and stems. The cost and time needed to initially screen herbicide rates, outcomes, and best practices typically is many years. The greenhouse screening approach takes months and provides valuable information to ensure that field trials, which are more expensive and impacted by changes in weather, are efficient in cost and outcomes. This project will initially focus on greenhouse validation of weed control of the most resistant weeds known in different geographical locations in the U.S. Dose response data for 50%-to-90% inhibition control/efficacy of herbicide resistant weeds will provide the information to develop a herbicide use label, directions for best practices, and good stewardship by using only the amount of herbicide needed for control without overuse. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.