Multiple-season field trials conducted on strawberries and soybeans with Inocucor Technologies' sustainable biological accelerators for farmers showed yield increases of 30 percent in strawberries and 8 percent in soybean at the end of the 2015 growing season.
Inocucor President and CEO Donald R. Marvin announced results of the field trials during a presentation at Agri Innovation Forum in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
"These are our first results from trials conducted by reputable industry and academic groups in Canada and the United States for the 2015 growing season," Marvin said. "They prove the ability of our sustainable biological products to help farmers dramatically increase yields and reduce season-to-season variability with crops."
Inocucor is a leading innovator and producer of bio-based products that improve crop yields, shorten growing periods and create healthier, more resilient soils for organic farmers, greenhouse growers and mainstream production farmers. Its approach uses fermentation to combine the strength of multi-strain fermentation of bacteria and yeasts into powerful soil and plant boosters that are safe for people and the environment.
The strawberry trial, now in its second year, was conducted on 14 acres in Ontario, Canada, by A & L Biological Agroecology Research Services Centre in London, Ontario, based on a treatment protocol developed in concert with Inocucor scientists. The trial involved application of Inocucor's first commercial product, Garden Solution™ (formulation IN-M1), to seedlings at mechanical transplantation.
Garden Solution is OMRI Listed® for organic production, approved for use in 27 U.S. states, and in use by greenhouse growers and farmers in the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia and Virginia.
Inocucor has expanded its soybean field trials, using its proprietary "cell free" bio-stimulation formulation (IN-M2) in a tank mix with a range of cultivars, soils and climates, as well as with other micronutrient and herbicide products. These 2015 trials add approximately 25 site-years to the three-year soybean research plot data completed at McGill University's Department of Plant Sciences, Macdonald Campus, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec.
In addition, the company is accumulating data from approximately 30 site-years and on more than 200 acres for soybean using both its IN-M1 and IN-M2 formulations with academic and industry partners. Preliminary research plot data from the United States using this micronutrient and herbicide-treatment package confirms an average 8 percent yield increase for a third consecutive soybean growing season.
Marvin also reported on first-year soybean and cotton trials with "a very large industry partner" using the IN-M2 formulation on several acres in the North and South Central regions of the United States that produced yield increases of approximately 8 and 20 percent, respectively.
"No other microbial consortia-based company can demonstrate this type of multi-year, multi-species data on row and high-value produce crops from the field," said Marvin.
Complete details of the A & L Biological strawberry trial can be found here.
Last week, Inocucor was issued patent No. 9,175,258 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect Inocucor consortia and unique microbial products. Its Garden Solution was licensed in California in May and is currently awaiting label approval. Last June, the company opened a 10,000-square-foot headquarters and cGMP laboratory in Montreal's Technoparc to scale up production of Garden Solution and to further develop its burgeoning product pipeline for bio-stimulation, bio-fertility and bio-protection.
Inocucor has attracted four rounds of venture capital from Cycle Capital Management, a prominent Canadian venture capital firm focused on the clean-tech sector. In February, August and October 2015, Inocucor closed interim rounds of financing from Cycle Capital Management with participation from Desjardins-Innovatech, the venture capital unit of one of North America's leading financial institutions and two family offices.
The company is currently completing a Series B equity-financing round on the order of $15 million with venture capital, institutional and family office investors.
For more information, visit www.inocucor.com