In recent years, agricultural production has faced tremendous pressure and challenges as the population has increased and crop areas have decreased. Conventional pesticides and genetically modified (GM) technology have alleviated the challenges facing agricultural production to a certain extent, but they have also brought about many problems.

(1) Conventional pesticides may lead to the development of resistance to pests and pathogens, thus leading to further aggravation of environmental and health problems.

(2) Genetically modified (GM) technology may cause potentially irreversible impacts on the environment and may lead to unforeseen long-term health and safety problems. Therefore, the search for safer, efficient and sustainable alternatives is an important issue facing agriculture today.

Carrying out more scientific control of crop pests and diseases can help reduce the use of chemical pesticides and improve the quality and yield of agricultural products. In recent years, scientific crop pest control techniques have been emphasized and have achieved certain result

According to our research, the current plant pest and disease market mainly has the following problems:

(1) Farm operation is scattered, green prevention and control technology is difficult to form a large-scale development.At present, China's agricultural operations are mainly based on family contracting and decentralized operations, with small production scale and outdated management methods, which makes it difficult to form a scale in the application of green prevention and control technology for crop pests and diseases. Secondly, the lack of green prevention and control technology reserves makes it difficult to carry out green control of crop pests and diseases.

(2) At present, China's crop green prevention and control technology is mainly taken by light, color, sex three trapping and other technologies, high input costs, slow results, and the difficulty of mastering the operating technology, farmers for the acceptance of green prevention and control technology adoption rate is low. There is an urgent need to introduce new, user-friendly and efficient biopesticides.

(3) Finally, the demand for higher quality products is still in the slow rising stage. At present, the market for high-end biopesticides has not yet been opened, and relevant laws and regulations are still being improved. More practitioners are needed to actively promote the construction and improvement of industry laws and regulations.

Diseases, pests and weeds of crops are the three major problems facing the stable production of agro-ecosystems, of which disease outbreaks pose a major risk to global food security and environmental sustainability, and lead to the loss of primary productivity and biodiversity, according to statistics, even in the case of widespread pesticide use, China's annual food losses due to diseases can still account for 10% to 15% of the total production, and cash crop losses are The loss of cash crops is relatively higher. This has a serious negative impact on the environment and socio-economic conditions in the affected areas.

Phytophthora infestans, for example, caused the world-shattering Irish famine of the 1840s, which resulted in the deaths of one million people from starvation and the emigration of millions more; and during World War I, there was a major outbreak of Phytophthora infestans in Germany, where a shortage of potatoes led to the deaths of 700,000 German civilians from starvation. To this day, causal mold remains a difficult disease to control.

Chemical pesticides such as mefenoxam and chlorothalonil, which are currently used in production, are often seen as effective in controlling late blight, but serious resistance problems are encountered when used alone. For some susceptible varieties, fungicides may sometimes need to be applied once a week, or even every three days at most in some smallholder production in Africa, and even then, late blight is still difficult to control, a problem that is difficult to avoid with conventional chemical pesticides.

In addition, the use of biopesticides such as mycorrhizal fungi is not as effective as it should be; under high disease pressure or unfavorable environmental conditions, mycorrhizal fungi are unable to completely suppress the disease and often need to be used in concert with chemical fungicides.

The development of disease-resistant varieties has also been the subject of extensive research by scientists, but due to the asexual nature of potato, it is often difficult to cross with relatives to achieve resistance, and most resistance genes act on only one physiological subspecies of M. pathogenicum, which has a high degree of genetic diversity and the ability to mutate rapidly. The high genetic diversity and mutation capacity of pathogenic A. flavus enables rapid adaptation to different environments and hosts and the generation of new physiological microspecies, resulting in frequent loss of resistance in disease-resistant varieties of potato.

Therefore, iterative improvement of biopesticides is very important in order to cope with complex agricultural problems.

Flora Sentinel's first potential customers: small farm farmers.

Flora Sentinel will necessarily start with on-farm trials, and our first partnership was through an agricultural cooperative. Therefore, we hope to be able to promote the product on small farms once it has been perfected. In human practice, we conducted a customer interview, and during our communication with Liangzhu Linhai Agricultural Cooperative, the base manager and technicians had a positive attitude towards the new biopesticide, and recognized our proposal to a certain extent. (See ihp Liangzhu Linhai section for details) Flora Sentinel is a revolutionary solution to plant diseases, and therefore requires the development of customers' scientific literacy and usage habits to realize their preference for our products.

After Market penetration (Needs-based segmentation), we need to extend the users of our products and implement Market expansion. When analyzing market demand, we focus on market size and growth rate (see 3.1 Market Size). In analyzing market demand, we focus on market size and growth rate (see 3.1 Market Size for details). We also analyze the competitive situation in the market (see 3.2 Competitive Analysis).

Expanding the usage scenarios of our products is very important for their sustainable development. We believe that our products are not only suitable for productive environments such as large-scale farms and planting sites, but also for non-productive environments such as indoor urban gardens, orchards and vegetable greenhouses.

1 Large Farms

For crops with large planting areas, high yield requirements, and relatively serious diseases, engineered bacterial strains combined with Advanced technologies such as precision agriculture can also be used to optimize resource use and increase yield.

2 Modern Planting Greenhouses

For high economic value crops that are susceptible to diseases, engineered bacterial strains combined with hydroponics or other soilless cultivation methods can ensure the quality of agricultural products.

3 Home Balconies or Gardens

For garden crops with high ornamental value, engineered strains can be used to keep plants healthy in combination with proper watering and fertilization.

Flora Sentinel has a complete product design, which can be found on our IMPLEMENTATION page. For our project design and experimental validation, you can refer to our Project and Experiment pages (links to corresponding pages).

Flora Sentinel Product

Core competence

Market viability

Market size & Market Capacity

The global pesticide consumption in 2019 was approximately 4.19 million metric tons, where China was by far the largest pesticide-consuming country (1.76 million metric tons), followed by the United States (408 thousand tons), Brazil (377 thousand tons), and Argentina (204 thousand tons) (Fernández, 2021)[1]. In southeast Asia, WHO reported an annual increase in pesticide usage with 20% of developing countries as pesticide-consumers, including Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Schreinemachers and Tipraqsa, 2012; Schreinemachers et al., 2015[2]).

According to an analysis of the future biopesticides market by Markets and Markets, a U.S.-based market research and consulting firm, the global biopesticides market size is estimated to be around USD 5.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to generate more than USD 11.3 billion by the end of 2027, at a projected CAGR of around 15.6% from 2022 to 2027. This remarkable growth trajectory reflects the growing demand for eco-friendly disease control solutions driven by the need for sustainable and safe food production, and the biopesticides industry is poised to revolutionize the agrochemical industry while improving crop yields and quality. According to analysis, developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region have less arable land per capita and currently favor the use of fast-acting chemical pesticides for quick and efficient production. Therefore, with increased education, economic development and the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, and with the demand for high-quality agricultural products, biopesticides will have greater potential for development in China in the future.

Policy

According to China's national economic "12th Five-Year Plan" plan to "14th Five-Year Plan", the state policy on pesticide industry has gone through a change from "pollution control" to "zero growth in the use of pesticides" to "green agriculture", reflecting the importance the state attaches to the green control of crop pests and diseases. Zero growth in pesticide use" to "green agriculture" changes, reflecting the state's emphasis on green crop pest control.

Efforts to strengthen the weak links in the industrial chain, in the implementation of the carbon peak carbon and the target task in the process of forging a new competitive advantage of the industry, which puts forward the direction of the development of China's pesticide industry. 2023 green agriculture will be ″promoting the green transformation of economic and social development″ in the rise of pesticide ecological, green pesticides will become the development of pesticide industry in 2023 point of view, high-efficiency, safe, economic, environmentally friendly pesticides will be the main direction of the development of the 2023 year. Efficient, safe, economic and environmentally friendly pesticides will be the main direction of development in 2023.

Pesticides have gone through several stages of development, including low efficiency and high toxicity, high efficiency and high toxicity, high efficiency and low toxicity, and now high efficiency, low toxicity and low residue, but the once advanced concept of "high efficiency, low toxicity and low residue" pesticides can no longer meet the needs of modern social development. The concept of "one high, two low" focuses on pesticide composition, but does not cover the equally important aspects of pesticide use; focus on human health, but does not cover the biological environment, which is closely related to human life.

The mechanism of action of traditional pesticides is to kill or prevent the growth of pathogens by entering plants and pathogenic bacteria to achieve control effects. This traditional mechanism accelerates the induction of tolerance and resistance of pathogenic bacteria, which in turn increases the amount of pesticides used, pollutes the soil and the environment, and often causes pesticide residues in crops. For example, as a high-efficiency, low-toxicity, low-residue pesticide fipronil, the correct use of mammals have no adverse effects, but only a trace contact will lead to the death of the whole box of bees; the same iodoacetamide herbicide, only 1 to 2 grams per acre, the effect is very good at that time, but the crop is very harmful to the later crop. At present, China's use of all pesticides in the toxicity of high, medium and low toxicity pesticides accounted for 5%, 5%, 20% respectively. It can be seen that China's toxicity of pesticides accounted for a relatively high proportion of the use of pesticides, pesticides can easily be excessive use of the ecological environment caused by the extremely adverse effects.

Chemical control, that is, the use of chemicals to eliminate pests directly, it has the advantages of fast action, good results, easy to use and so on. But simply use chemical control of rice pests and diseases can only be taken to the emergency role, can not create conditions to hinder the occurrence of a large number of pests and diseases, and will lead to higher costs, pests and diseases on the drug resistance, causing pests and diseases again rampant and secondary rise for the main, resulting in residual hazards and other shortcomings.

Take potato late blight as an example, its pathogenic bacterium Phytophthora infestans (Phytophthora infestans) in the 1840s triggered the shocking world of the Irish famine, resulting in one million starvation deaths, millions of emigrants; during the First World War, the German potato late blight outbreaks, which resulted in a shortage of potatoes leading to the starvation deaths of 700,000 German civilians. To this day, the causal mold remains a difficult disease to control. Chemical pesticides such as mefenoxam and chlorothalonil, which are currently used in production, are often seen as effective in controlling late blight, but serious resistance problems are encountered when used alone. For some susceptible varieties, weekly fungicide applications may sometimes be required, even up to once every three days in some smallholder production in Africa, and even then, late blight incidence remains difficult to control, a problem that is difficult to avoid with conventional chemical pesticides.

Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are the main products of choice to increase crop yields and control pests and diseases, but at the same time produce environmental, energy, and cost problems, which have become a major problem plaguing the economic and social development of countries around the world, seriously restricting the sustainability of agricultural development. Bioproducts (including biofertilizers and biopesticides) prepared using proteins from microorganisms or fungi are the main measures for high-quality, high-efficiency and pollution-free production of contemporary crops.

In addition, the use of biopesticides such as mycorrhizal fungi is not as effective as it should be; under high disease pressure or unfavorable environmental conditions, mycorrhizal fungi are unable to completely suppress the disease and usually need to be used in synergy with chemical fungicides.

At present, a number of new biopesticide companies have emerged in China, such as our cooperation and exchange of Shanghai Zhisheng Yougu Biotechnology Co., Ltd, their products are mainly dsRNA, from the contact and exchange of communication with them, we learned that the current approval and the speed of the promotion of the improvement of the laws and regulations is a major limitation to the commercialization of the reason, so in the cooperation with the approval and the experimental validation, we Therefore, we can cooperate with them in terms of approval and experimental validation.

The development of disease-resistant varieties has also been widely studied by scientists. However, due to the nature of asexual reproduction in potato, it is often difficult to cross with relatives to achieve resistance, and most resistance genes are only effective against one physiological subspecies of M. avium, because effective resistance is only achieved when the pathogen expresses an RXLR effector gene that matches the corresponding plant resistance (R), which is a highly genetically diverse and rapidly mutable species, and which is highly resistant to the disease. Disease-causing Aspergillus oryzae has a high degree of genetic diversity and variability, and is able to adapt rapidly to different environments and hosts, generating new physiological microspecies, resulting in frequent loss of resistance in disease-resistant varieties of potato.

As a niche segment of crop diseases, there are not many bacterial fungicide products. According to statistics, China's bacterial fungicides are only 15 active ingredients, the Ministry of Agriculture registered bacterial disease bacterial agent registration certificate is only 42, and dominated by domestic production, the international six agrochemical giants research and development is very little. Currently commonly used bacterial fungicides mainly include copper preparations (organic copper, inorganic copper), agricultural antibiotics (two years later will be all out of the market), thiazole and microbial agents four categories.

Table Cost Forecast Table (Unit: Yuan)

(1) In the early stage of product development, the participants are mainly start-up members, not counting the individual salary, and the marketing investment is low, the work is based on tech- nical research and development work, and at the same time need to invest in infrastructure; later need to pay a relatively fixed cost of maintenance and upgrading.

(2) In the first year of its establishment, the company intends to use the Innovation and Open Laboratory of Biological Experiment Center of Zhejiang University, and purchase some instruments for basic construction according to the demand of this project, without constructing the laboratory on its own. In 2024, the company started to invest in the construction of its own laboratory, which is expected to be settled in 2025, and at the same time, it constructed the production line of the product, and at the same time, it established the technological platform, and through the develop- ment of the production method of the pipeline type, the Reduce production costs by approximately 50% and expand production and sales scale.

The company's current products are mainly saRNA biopesticides, as well as designed and equipped with automatic agricultural application equipment. In addition, the team is now actively supporting the development of nano-antibody libraries based on pathogenic bacterial effectors, which will be published and patented in 2023-2024, and practical products are expected to be available in 2024.

The world's biopesticide market is promising. The combination of biopesticides and synthetic biology in the current market is still relatively rare. On the one hand, it is because the safety and effectiveness of synthetic biology pesticides are yet to be proved, and on the other hand, it is necessary to consider the patent issue in the combination of technology. In this regard, we hope to do our best to promote and contribute to the field of combining biopesticides and synthetic biology, and at the same time to clarify the scope of intellectual property rights, establish an effective intellectual property operation environment and institutional setup, so as to avoid future difficulties caused by intellectual property rights issues.

In this regard, we have consulted professionals, conceived the idea of applying for patents, and applied for invention patents and utility patents for our engineered Agrobacterium and the overall product, respectively, as far as the conditions permit. Considering from a longer term perspective, with the advancement of the product development process and the proximity of the launch of the product to the market, the number of patent layouts around the product-related parts, devices, materials and other fields will increase, and eventually we will realize the protection of product innovation and competitive advantage through patent portfolio.

Our marketing and sales strategy is to provide efficient, cost-effective solutions to meet the plant vaccine needs of growers and seed companies through strategic partnerships with them. We will build close relationships with key players in these industries and provide them with a comprehensive range of products and services. Specifically, our sales strategy will include the following:

(1) building partnerships with growers and seed companies to provide them with interchangeable, customized vaccine programs. We will provide our customers with customized products and services, including vaccine programs based on geographic location and crop type, to help them reduce disease risks and increase yields.

(2) Participate in various industry exhibitions and conferences at home and abroad to showcase our products and technologies and increase brand awareness. We will seek various opportunities, including exhibitions and conferences, to showcase our products and technologies to our customers and partners. These activities will help expand our customer base and increase brand awareness, thereby increasing sales.

(3) Establish online sales channels to expand market coverage. We plan to develop an easy-to-use online tool to help customers assess disease risk and select the best vaccine program. We will also provide purchasing options on our website to make it easier for customers to purchase our products online.