High-throughput screening of biologicals as an alternative to pesticides in agriculture

The growing world population, projected to increase from the current 7.8 billion to about 9.7 billion people by 2050, requires an annual increase in food production of around 8%. To achieve this, not only must productivity itself be increased, but crop losses—which can account for 20–40% depending on the crop—must also be drastically reduced. Pesticides used to combat pests and diseases make an important contribution to this effort.

However, commonly used pesticides currently have significant negative impacts on soil and water quality, biodiversity, and thus on ecosystems. They can also leave residues in food. This applies to both synthetic pesticides used in conventional agriculture—such as neonicotinoid insecticides or the herbicide glyphosate—and mineral-based agents like copper sulfate, which is used in organic farming.

As an alternative to synthetic and mineral pesticides, biological plant protection agents (biologicals) are becoming increasingly important because they are highly specific in their mode of action and can be rapidly degraded by soil bacteria. A well-known example is Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) proteins, which are used in both conventional and organic agriculture.

Biological crop protection products can therefore make a significant contribution to reducing crop losses and thus to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — in particular, Goal 12 (“Responsible Consumption and Production”) and Goal 13 (“Climate Action”) — as well as supporting the EU’s “Farm to Fork” strategy.

However, the identification, production, and testing of new biologicals is currently extremely labor-intensive, since the source organisms can often be difficult or impossible to cultivate.

This problem can be addressed using the patented Plant Cell Pack (PCP) platform, which enables the production and analysis of new biologicals directly in plant cells within one month.

Currently, the main challenge lies in the high personnel effort required to operate the platform. Although the individual subprocesses of the screening system are already automated, the transfer between these components still requires manual adjustments.

To simplify the transfer between subprocesses in the high-throughput screening system and reduce costs, the PCP platform is to be further automated, making it suitable for use in an industrial environment.