BioPhero

Insects devour up to 20 percent of food crops before they’re harvested; farmers fight back by spraying fields with millions of tons of pesticides annually. BioPhero takes a safer and more envi­ron­men­tally friendly approach, engineering microbes to produce synthetic pheromones that confuse male insects and interrupt mating cycles. Agri­cul­tural sciences company FMC Corporation acquired BioPhero in 2022 as part of a commitment to biological crop protection.