PhylloTech awarded 2-year Phase II grant from USDA-NIFA

PhylloTech awarded 2-year Phase II grant from USDA-NIFA

PhylloTech, LLC (Madison, WI) announces that it has been awarded a $500,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to continue work on new technologies that could be utilized to curb plant diseases. “This project will allow us to expand our development of enzymatic products to control bacterial pathogens in agriculture,” stated Ryan W. Shepherd, Ph.D., the company’s CEO and Project Director for the grant. “We’re essentially disorienting pathogens so that they do not cause disease.”

The popularity of environmentally-friendly biopesticides among consumers is rapidly increasing. PhylloTech received the 2-year Phase II grant through the very competitive SBIR program at the United States Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA). “The technical concepts underlying this project originated from my postdoctoral fellowship in California, so this grant is personally rewarding and exciting to see commercialized,” said Shepherd. “We’re developing commercial biodeterrents that can be used to control disease on many different crops without adverse impacts on the environment.” The USDA-NIFA grant funding will be used to scale-up production, perform field trials against numerous bacterial pathogens, and initiate product registration. PhylloTech is an agricultural biotechnology company that is developing antibody bioproduction systems in plants and innovative strategies for disease control. Please visit www.phyllotech.com for further information.