Latest / Cereal Killers / Trehalose 6‑Phosphate: The Next Big Biostimulant for Wheat?

Transcript

Trehalose 6‑Phosphate: The Next Big Biostimulant for Wheat? · Cereal Killers

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr. Russell Sharp,
• 0:03
  the founder of Eutrema Limited.
• 0:05
  We make premium fertilizers, novel biostimulants and organic biopesticides and
• 0:10
  we're talking biostimulants today and a very interesting biostimulant but just
• 0:16
  as much as it is interesting in an academic way about what it does on the crops.
• 0:20
  It's really interesting from the perspective of how we develop biostimulants
• 0:25
  and how they're marketed and they come to market and what makes them a success
• 0:29
  and academia's involvement in that.
• 0:33
  And I'll give you my view on that. And I think it's really interesting from
• 0:38
  a business perspective as well.
• 0:40
  So the one we're going to talk about today is not one that I manufacture at Utrema.
• 0:45
  It's not one I come across very often, but there seems
• 0:49
  to be a number of companies springing up that are
• 0:52
  talking about it and it's t6p
• 0:56
  or trehalose 6-phosphate and
• 1:01
  this compound t6p is
• 1:06
  a central sucrose status signal
• 1:09
  in plants it controls the resource
• 1:12
  allocations including photosynthesis carbon partitioning
• 1:16
  and growth across all plant species
• 1:19
  so there's been genetic studies and peer-reviewed
• 1:22
  field data that show that foliar applications of
• 1:25
  t6p this pre this uh this signaling sugar
• 1:29
  as it were can raise yields particularly in
• 1:32
  wheat and for the moment this is where the biostimulant
• 1:36
  is focused but it may go on to other crops and
• 1:39
  horticultural crops and hydroponic crops and things like this later on
• 1:42
  but it's it's been studied academically
• 1:45
  in wheat and that's where a lot of these companies that are
• 1:48
  selling products or hoping to sell products are
• 1:51
  focused their energy because wheat is a massive crop worldwide
• 1:55
  it's particularly in the uk it's probably the main crop and overall the academic
• 2:00
  consensus is that t6p pathway intervention is a credible way of improving yields
• 2:06
  but large independent multi-crop field data is still you know some way off there's certainly.
• 2:14
  In-house and small-scale academic studies and
• 2:17
  things like this so but let's get so it's an
• 2:20
  interesting one it could be the new tricontinol so
• 2:23
  tricontinol is a is a fatty alcohol
• 2:26
  that's used widely in horticulture it's a almost
• 2:30
  like t6p it's a it's a it's a
• 2:33
  natural compound that you'll find in plants it's not a hormone but
• 2:36
  it it helps with photosynthesis and partitioning things
• 2:39
  like that so it's very and this could be in that
• 2:42
  sort of band of biostimulants a single
• 2:45
  compound that is not a hormone but is
• 2:48
  does have biostimulatory effects and modifies plant
• 2:51
  growth and photosynthesis so but the really
• 2:54
  interesting thing is that there is one
• 2:58
  company called unium and
• 3:02
  i don't know you pronounce that union u-n-i-u-m and
• 3:07
  i've met the one of the guys from there he gave a talk at the same
• 3:09
  talk i was giving to an agricultural distributor early
• 3:12
  in the year and he talked he's got a rain union have
• 3:15
  got a range of biostimulant and fertilizer products
• 3:19
  just like utreema have and we don't compete on many
• 3:21
  things but we don't interact either very often and
• 3:25
  one of the compounds was this a t6p
• 3:29
  product and he showed.
• 3:32
  Some data for their for their studies and
• 3:35
  things like this and it sparked
• 3:38
  my interest because i've heard of another company selling this as almost a
• 3:41
  proprietary they invented it and
• 3:44
  so it'd be really interesting to compare the two so we're comparing union's
• 3:47
  product to sugar rocks his product and the union products one liter per hectare
• 3:53
  and really really high return on investments are claimed nine to one So that's
• 4:01
  sort of like, you know, increase your yields massively.
• 4:03
  Like 87% above breakeven performance.
• 4:06
  That's a really high claim for return on investment for a biostimulant.
• 4:10
  And then costs of like £64 a hectare.
• 4:15
  So, yeah, really strong claims there.
• 4:19
  And then the actual claims of germination improvement, chlorophyll concentration,
• 4:24
  stress tolerance, many of the same claims you'll find in any biased imminent, really.
• 4:29
  And they claim 69 trials and pharma experiences.
• 4:34
  And whether pharma experience just means customer bought it and tried it and liked it, I don't know.
• 4:40
  Intellectual property-wise, it's more about the formulation and
• 4:44
  less clarity about the unique ip i think they may even
• 4:47
  buy the product in rather than make it themselves that's it
• 4:50
  talking to them that's what they do for a lot of their products they're a specialist in
• 4:53
  formulators and distribution things like this whereas
• 4:56
  sugar rocks this is a product that
• 4:59
  came on later but they're claiming to have proprietary technology now it
• 5:02
  might be that the t6p molecule is slightly different and
• 5:05
  it's they've published in nature biotechnology i
• 5:09
  think they've also got a patent perhaps on this certainly they
• 5:12
  are looking for a lot and a lot of investment but it
• 5:15
  doesn't the thing about their investment is it doesn't mention that
• 5:18
  other companies are selling t6p biostimulants and
• 5:22
  if i was at union if that's how you pronounce it
• 5:25
  i'd be a bit pissed off myself because this is
• 5:28
  a sugar rocks is a spin-out company from
• 5:31
  rothamstead research in oxford university and so
• 5:35
  that's public money and public grants and
• 5:38
  investment public investment that's gone into
• 5:41
  producing a competitor to their product it's not
• 5:44
  gone to support them it's gone to compete against
• 5:47
  them and take market share away from them and this
• 5:51
  that would be extremely frustrating to me if i was union the same happened to
• 5:56
  me with the james hutton institute they we did a lot of research on kaitasan
• 6:02
  and in the past i've worked with James Hutton Institute on Kitesan and then.
• 6:08
  And we were marketing Kitesan and then suddenly James Hutton Institute decided
• 6:13
  they were going to start up.
• 6:14
  A Kytosan company, Spinout. And again, that's public money.
• 6:19
  The James Sutton Institute is an academic research organization in Scotland.
• 6:24
  I'm not quite sure whatever happened to that, but when I heard the news about
• 6:29
  that, I was like, that's a bit off.
• 6:31
  Rather than partnering with British business, they're actually competing directly
• 6:37
  against British business.
• 6:38
  So that was that's very strange there's no
• 6:41
  data yet on or information yet on sugar rocks
• 6:44
  and how much how they're going to position it in the market like costs
• 6:48
  and things like this they're very much at the early stage
• 6:52
  they're every trade show i've been to recently they're
• 6:55
  presenting their biostimulants and so i think they're both looking
• 6:58
  for investors and looking for customers and um
• 7:02
  best of luck to of them the problem
• 7:05
  they said they're going to look at two new compounds
• 7:09
  as well they're going to be patenting them in the next few
• 7:13
  months that's interesting because a biostimulant
• 7:16
  company that sells just one product is is in danger it's very difficult to run
• 7:21
  a successful profitable company with just one biostimulant especially if you've
• 7:26
  got lots and lots of investors and you're burning through cash and you've only
• 7:31
  got one product and it has to live and die by whether farmers decide to use it.
• 7:35
  As I've said previously on podcasts, biostimulants are a vitamin, not a pill.
• 7:39
  So once farmers have paid for their fertilizers and their pesticides,
• 7:42
  if they've got any money left, they can then choose whether they want to gamble
• 7:46
  on increasing yields with a biostimulant or put that money in the bank.
• 7:49
  So just because you have trial data that says you can increase yields by 10%
• 7:55
  or whatever it is you claim, it doesn't mean that farmers are going to buy it.
• 7:59
  Because they will still see it as a risk and they might be prudent and put that
• 8:03
  money away for further investments, especially with the economic climate and
• 8:07
  the way farming is going.
• 8:09
  So it's an interesting one. We still need lots of information about where the
• 8:15
  Sugar Rocks products will position itself.
• 8:17
  And I guess if it goes onto farms and it sees really good success, then it'll be taken up.
• 8:22
  Same goes for the Union product and any biostimut, whether you're buying a T6P
• 8:28
  product or any other type of biostimulant.
• 8:30
  So, interesting one.
• 8:33
  To look at, I'd say you've got the Sugar Rocks' advantages are possibly patented
• 8:41
  technology and the fact they've got government funding grants and investment behind them.
• 8:47
  And Unium's advantages, they've already got routes to market.
• 8:49
  They're already working with the distributors.
• 8:51
  So it'd be interesting to know which one comes out on top in the fight for T6P supremacy.
• 8:58
  And yeah, watch this space. Just look back at that Kytosan spin out.
• 9:03
  It was actually University of Strathclyde spin-out that was working with the
• 9:06
  James Hutton Institute. So I'll just clarify that before I get sued.
• 9:09
  I've got enough heat on my back already with my previous podcast episodes.
• 9:14
  That's everything for today. Tomorrow I'm heading to Fruit Attraction in Madrid.
• 9:18
  So hopefully there'll be lots of biostimulant companies there I can talk to.
• 9:22
  And then the next week I'm going to the Vertical Farming World Congress in Amsterdam.
• 9:28
  I've been able to blag some free tickets for those events. Thanks very much to the organisers.
• 9:33
  To get so we can do some podcasts about the technology that's
• 9:36
  on show there if you are organizing a show or a
• 9:38
  trade event a conference then hit me up with some free tickets and i'll fly
• 9:44
  over on my own dime and come and talk to your attendees and your exhibitors
• 9:50
  if you've liked this podcast then please do give it an apple podcast review
• 9:53
  and that would help me tremendously until next time thank you very much for listening goodbye.