Grace Breeding Ltd. (the Company or Grace Breeding) announced the results from trials of its ProMagen™ (formerly known as WDS), in soybean plants, conducted in the field under a research and development collaboration with its partners at the State University of Londrina (UEL), based in Paraná State, Brazil. Results showed that using Grace Breeding’s ProMagen™ in soybean plants there was both higher resilience and tolerance as well as higher yield produced. Grace Breeding’s ProMagen is a foliar formulation product based on botanical extracts, unlike synthetic fungicides or pesticides that can contaminate groundwater and food and have a high residual effect, damaging the health of farmers and consumers.

These results support the use of Grace Breeding’s ProMagen as a promising environmentally friendly solution to improve plant response to disease attack and prevent high disease severity. Results From the Brazil Field test in Soybean In the field tests conducted in soybean plants, Grace Breeding’s ProMagen showed plant resilience enhancement and disease tolerance when compared to the (four), agricultural standard pesticide application methods used by farmers: Propiconazole + Difenoconazole (first application), Benzovindiflupyr + Prothioconazole + Chlorothalonil (second application), Difenoconazole + Cyproconazole + Chlorothalonil (third application) and Difenoconazole + Cyproconazole (fourth application). Specifically, Grace Breeding’s ProMagen demonstrated greater disease control efficiency for most metrics evaluated.

In addition, when combined with a pesticide such as the ones studied in this field trial, Grace Breeding’s ProMagen was found to have the potential to increase the efficiency of chemical and biological active ingredients in disease control. In summary, Grace Breeding’s ProMagen also provided gains of up to six bags of soybeans per hectare, when compared to the commercial standard, which would yield approximately, today, US $130 more in crops per hectare. In Brazil and other areas around the world, synthetic molecules, or pesticides, are often used with soybean crop to control different plant diseases.

However, environmental problems are caused due to the contamination of ground water and food, with a high residual effect. This damages the health of both farmers and consumers, among other negative effects. As such, the development of more sustainable products is encouraged, such as botanical extracts that have provided interesting results as bio-activators for resilience enhancement, improving the plant response to disease attack and preventing high disease severity.

In Brazil, the Londrina State University-UEL and Gaia AgroSolutions, in partnership with Grace Breeding from Israel, are testing and validating Grace Breeding’s technologies that fit these purposes.