Live Challenges
Unlocking By-Product Streams: Novel Bioactives for Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance
"Novel bioactives from underused by-products could help crops withstand drought, salinity, and other abiotic stresses. We seek academic and industry partners with promising science, novel materials, and a shared ambition to develop sustainable agricultural biostimulants."
Alessandro Biasone, Head Biostimulant Chemistry and Formulation Science, Syngenta
Background
Syngenta is seeking novel bioactive ingredients from sustainable by-product streams to improve plant abiotic stress.
Specifically, we’re looking for novel, natural-origin bioactive ingredients recovered from sustainable by-product streams for evaluation as biostimulant active substances.
The focus is on well-characterized ingredients that offer genuine differentiation from established commercial biostimulants. Potential sources may include food and drink processing, industrial fermentation, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, or other biotechnological industries generating underutilized biological materials.
Syngenta is also interested in academic and early-stage research that identifies promising bioactive compounds, fractions or classes of compounds that could potentially be recovered or refined from such streams. Applicants do not need to own, control or have direct access to the relevant by-product stream, provided that the proposed source and bioactive opportunity are clearly identified and supported by scientific evidence.
Biostimulants of interest include solutions that support crop establishment and address abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity and temperature stress, as well as solutions that improve root development, nutrient use efficiency, crop performance or crop quality.
Syngenta welcomes submissions from academia, start-ups, biotechnology companies and industrial partners. Submissions may range from research findings identifying a promising bioactive opportunity through to developed ingredients that are available for evaluation.
What we're looking for
- Scientific evidence supporting the biological activity and the connection between the bioactive and the identified source stream
- Natural-origin ingredient or identified bioactive opportunity derived from, or with clear potential to be recovered from, a sustainable by-product, co-product or circular economy stream
- A level of provable quality and consistency in production where the ingredient is already being produced
- Ability to supply material at gram-to-kilogram scale for initial evaluation where material is currently available
- Chemical fingerprinting, marker-compound identification or other analytical characterization is available
- Identification or characterization of the bioactive compound, fraction or compound class responsible for the observed activity
- Information on the likely abundance, availability or recoverability of the bioactive from the proposed source stream
- Clear technical pathway for process scale-up beyond laboratory batch production to multi-tonne scale
- Regulatory or safety documentation available
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