US (CA): Research greenhouse to focus on biopesticides

Row upon row of lima beans, peppers and other crops in the first stages of budding growth, fill hundreds of small black pots inside a gleaming new West Sacramento greenhouse.

Part of a $12 million expansion by the pharmaceutical company Bayer at a 15-acre facility, these plants, and the research results they could yield, hold the promise of developing new varieties of biopesticides that environmentalists see as a hopeful alternative to the sometimes toxic chemicals now used by growers.

The plan in West Sacramento is to grow microbes in fermentation tanks and transfer them into the greenhouse environment for large-scale lab trials seeking to identify which microbes defend crops from certain pests.

At the larger of the two greenhouses, the crops grow under high-tech lighting and state-of-the-art greenhouse glass imported from Germany. Some of the crops in the 15,000-square-foot structure are destined for a 1-acre outdoor grow plot at the rear of the greenhouse building designed to replicate a farm environment.

Read more at The Sacramento Bee