Biotech Updates

Oxitec Completes Friendly™ Fall Armyworm Deployments in Brazil's Top Corn-growing Regions

July 20, 2022

Oxitec has shared the successful completion of the second large-scale pilot season of the Friendly™ fall armyworm in Brazil. Following full commercial biosafety approval from Brazilian regulators in 2021, two pilot seasons have enabled large-scale testing and the validation of performance in commercial farm settings in two of Brazil's major corn-growing regions.

During the pilot season, deployments of the Friendly™ fall armyworm were conducted in commercial corn fields in São Paulo state, in partnership with Lagoa Bonita Sementes, and in Mato Grosso, Brazil's most important corn-growing state, in partnership with Fundação MT, moving the Friendly™ fall armyworm solution closer towards commercialization in Brazil.

Male Friendly™ fall armyworms were released during the corn-growing season over thousands of acres in commercial corn fields, allowing the product team to validate the effectiveness of the technology. Ricardo Batista, an agronomist at Lagoa Bonita Sementes, explains that the Friendly™ fall armyworm is an exciting new biological technology with the potential to deliver transformative value to Brazilian agriculture.

For more details, read the news release from Oxitec.


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