Israel-based bioinsecticide company IBI Ag has raised $6.1 million in the first tranche of its Series A funding.
Corteva led the round through its investment and partnership platform Corteva Catalyst, which works with early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators in agtech.
Israeli agtech VC the Trendlines Group, Iron Nation, and Consensus Business Group also participated, as did the Israel Innovation Authority via a grant.
‘The advantage of being cost effective’
“Our approach is quite novel,” IBI Ag CEO Arnon Heyman tells AgFunderNews. “We work with very special antibodies that are very, very small.”
Pest resistance to conventional crop protection products and concerns about those products’ environmental footprint have led to an uptick in bioinsecticide products over the last several years. Researchers and entrepreneurs now have a range of tools to work with, from peptides to computational biology to encapsulation tech.
Antibodies are used in many applications, particularly in the medical and pharma worlds, but because they are expensive to produce, they are not suited for agriculture, Heyman notes.
“In order to make this a very good solution for agriculture, we’ve developed antibodies that are 10 times smaller than any regular antibody. With every gram of active ingredient [in IBI Ag products], we have 10 times more antibodies [than applications in the medical field] because they are smaller. This is what gives us the advantage of being cost effective.”
In particular, it enables IBI Ag to make products that land within the average farmer’s price range, thus addressing a major concern for growers when it comes to buying biologicals, he adds.
‘Considerable potential’ for tackling insects
IBI Ag formed in 2017 by The Trendlines Group and founders Amir Ayali, PhD, and Rony Oren Benaroya, PhD, along with the support of the Israel Innovation Authority.
The company works with “nanobodies,” or “single-domain antibodies,” as they are also called, which are developed via a fermentation process and can be sprayed on plants in the field. There, they will bind to an insect’s gut, damaging its digestive system and eventually terminating it.
The company claims its products are also “highly stable” across a number of different environments and field conditions.
Because the nanobodies are natural material, they break down quickly after spraying and don’t cause harm to beneficial insects, other animals, or elements of the surrounding environment like groundwater. The company says its technology works across many different pests, including sucking (e.g., aphids) and chewing insects (e.g., caterpillars) and for most crops.
“We see considerable potential for IBI Ag’s bioinsecticides to be a smart solution for farmers to tackle devastating insects while minimizing environmental impacts,” noted Tom Greene, senior director at Corteva Inc. and global leader for Corteva Catalyst.
Scaling up production and regulatory efforts
IBI Ag is currently conducting field trials with its technology and plans to start the regulatory process for the United States by the end of the year, says Heyman.
While the technology has been developed in Israel, he adds that the US is IBI Ag’s first target market. The company also has plans to register products in Latin America — which has a friendly regulatory climate for biologicals — and Europe.
The bulk of this Series A funding round will go towards scaling up and the regulatory process. Meanwhile, Heyman says the company also plans to bring in additional investors to the Series A funding.
“We believe our single-domain antibody technology is a game changer for driving agricultural productivity while preserving the environment, and the investment announced today is a significant step towards delivering this innovation to farmers across the globe.”
Further reading:
Corteva Catalyst exec on investing in agrifoodtech startups: ‘We’re trying to be very intentional…’
