EPA Clears Marrone Bio Innovations’ Broad-Spectrum Insecticide
14 October 2011 Marrone Bio Innovations said in a statement that the US Environmental Protection Agency approved MBI-203 EP, its first broad-spectrum natural insecticide, as the biopesticides company adds a third product for commercialization to its growing portfolio.
MBI-203 EP, to be marketed as Grandevo, will first be launched in Florida for insects such as citrus psyllid, the Davis, California-based company said. It plans to launch Grandevo nationally in 2012, and to market the product to growers and pest control advisors through its existing distribution channels. The company also markets the biofungicide Regalia and Zequanox, for controlling invasive aquatic mussels in fresh waterways.
The company said that field trials have shown Grandevo has “equivalent or better performance to chemical pesticides.” The product addresses a broad spectrum of insects (both chewing and sucking species), and its “complex mode of action – ingestion, contact and repellency – makes it more difficult for insects to develop resistance versus the single-site products predominantly used today.”
Grandevo is derived from a new species of Chromobacterium, named subtsugae, the company said. When unwanted insects encounter Grandevo, they become highly agitated — when it is ingested, the targeted insects will stop feeding and die.
The product can be used for managing psyllids, thrips, mealybugs, leaf miners, stinkbugs, Lygus, leaf beetles, white grubs and armyworms. Grandevo requires no pre-harvest interval and has minimum re-entry intervals, enabling crops to be harvested soon after application, it said. Marrone Bio Innovations said that Grandevo’s exemption from the requirement of a food tolerance is “particularly important for exported crops that are subject to maximum residue levels.”
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