Moa and NAICONS join forces to discover the next generation of naturally-occurring herbicides

OXFORD, England, March 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Oxford-based agricultural biotech firm Moa Technology has stepped up the global hunt for a safe, effective and affordable biological herbicide by forming a new partnership with NAICONS, an Italian natural products company.

Moa's proprietary high-throughput screening platform will rapidly test 70,000 micro-bacterial extracts from NAICONS' library of natural products, searching for biological leads which could control weeds, while being safe to humans or the environment, either as a standalone new herbicide or to enhance the efficacy, safety, and resistance-breaking potential of existing herbicides.

The need for new herbicides to help farmers protect their harvests has never been more urgent, with over 273 species of weeds now resistant to one or more commercially available herbicides. For example, annual crop losses from weeds cost the US economy over $11 billion and the Australian economy over $3.3 billion.  In the UK, the herbicide-resistant weed blackgrass costs farmers around $500 million every year.

To date, Moa's platforms have screened almost 800,000 synthetic and naturally-occurring compounds, discovering over 70 potentially novel mode of action herbicides. Three synthetic herbicides with novel modes of action discovered by Moa have already performed strongly in their first two seasons of international field trials.

The agreement with NAICONS gives Moa exclusive rights to develop any new herbicides discovered in the library, with value to be shared from future licensing and commercialisation.

Dr Virginia Corless, Chief Executive Officer of Moa Technology, said "Our discovery platform is very well suited to screen natural product libraries, as it provides a reliable and early indication when a compound is too weak or too toxic to become a commercially viable herbicide.  We are looking forward to applying our screening technology to NAICONS' high-quality library of actinomycete bacteria to see if we can find a biological compound that can help farmers control weeds effectively and sustainably."

Stefano Donadio, Chief Executive Officer of NAICONS said: "We are very excited about this collaboration. Our library has never been screened for herbicides and we are confident promising lead molecules will be rapidly identified through our powerful micro4all platform. Over 150,000 different molecules have been identified in the extracts sent to Moa and our team is eager to help in identifying the most promising herbicide candidates."

About Moa:

Spun out of Oxford University in 2017, Moa aims to provide farmers with effective, safe and affordable herbicides to protect their harvests against the toughest and most resistant of weeds.  With our proprietary technology platforms, we have screened over 700,000 synthetic and 100,000 naturally occurring compounds in the last three years, discovering over 70 promising novel mode of action areas.  Our three most advanced novel mode of action herbicides have just completed a second successful season of international field trials.  In July 2024 Moa signed a major partnership with Nufarm to co-develop and commercialise one of these new chemical series.

About NAICONS:

NAICONS Srl (www.naicons.com) is a Milan-based biotech company specializing in the discovery and development of bioactive molecules. Its proprietary micro4all platform integrates a vast and diverse library of actinomycete bacteria, a ready-to-screen extract collection, and an advanced molecular annotation database to accelerate the identification of compounds with applications in human, animal and plant health. With decades of expertise in natural product research, NAICONS collaborates with public and private institutions worldwide to drive innovation in drug discovery, agriculture and biotechnology, unlocking the potential of microbial diversity to develop next-generation solutions.    

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SOURCE MOA Technology