Micropep Wins 'Precision Agriculture Solution Of The Year' in 2023 AgTech Breakthrough Awards Program

Wed September 13, 2023
Global Ag Tech Initiative

Micropep Technologies, a global leader in micropeptide technology, announced it has been selected as the winner of the "Precision Agriculture Solution Of The Year" award in the 4th annual AgTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by AgTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global agricultural and food technology markets today.

"Micropep is dedicated to making its crop protection solutions widely accessible. We're pioneering the first generation of micropeptide-based innovations for agriculture to provide practical solutions for farmers," said Thomas Laurent, co-founder and CEO of Micropep.

"We're so pleased to win the ‘Precision Agriculture Solution Of The Year' award, which gives us impetus to continue our mission to revolutionize food production through sustainable, cost-effective and efficient biological solutions while also helping adapt the global food system to the impacts of climate change and safeguarding humanity."

Micropep provides new efficient and sustainable crop protection tools with novel modes of action based on micropeptides. Micropeptides are short natural protein molecules encoded in plant genomes with the ability to turn specific genes on or off, influencing plant phenotypes.

Micropep's platform combines computer science, plant biology and peptide biochemistry to discover bioactive micropeptides and convert them into effective, sustainable agricultural solutions. Microprep combines AI and biotechnologies in order to rapidly discover these bio-efficient peptides and turn those into next generation products for farmers.

Micropep has recently partnered with FMC Corporation to bring the development of biological solutions to control destructive herbicide-resistant weeds that reduce crop yields. The focus will be on developing new solutions for controlling key herbicide-resistant weeds in corn and soybeans, and to develop novel micropeptide technology to expedite and improve the success rate in identifying biological herbicides. Their current micropeptide pipeline specifically targets resistant pathogens and weeds in major crops.

The mission of the annual AgTech Breakthrough Awards program is to conduct the industry's most comprehensive analysis and evaluation of agricultural and food technology categories, including Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based agricultural technologies, farm management, indoor farming, food quality, data analytics and many more. This year's program attracted more than 1,750 nominations from over 15 different countries throughout the world.

"Micropep is part of the next revolution in farming, utilizing scientific innovation to work with nature rather than against it. Many existing techniques permanently modify the genome of a plant, restricting its ability to respond to changes. Through micropeptides, Micropep's approach is more adaptable and dynamic; their biotechnology can help farming by increasing quality and crop yields and improving overall safety," said Bryan Vaughn, managing director, AgTech Breakthrough.

"Agriculture is a huge greenhouse gas emitter, even as climate change reduces farm yields and conventional chemicals are banned. Micropeps' unique platform combines AI, bioproduction and delivery technologies to discover, produce and formulate micropeptide solutions to address these major agronomic challenges."