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Bee Vectoring Technologies announces filing for patent on new honeybee delivery system
Mar. 6, 2017
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CanadaThere are an estimated 80 million commercial honeybee hives in use worldwide. The newly developed BVT system is compatible with most commercial honeybee hives and is designed to deliver a wide variety of plant protection products, such as BVT's proprietary BVT-CR7 biological control agent, that inhibit or eliminate common diseases and pests in crops that are pollinated by honeybees. These include almonds, apples, melons, and sunflowers. This system is a highly effective alternative to spraying application methods that use a lot of water, and has the potential to dramatically reduce the quantity of chemicals that are sprayed on the crops.
In initial trials in sunflowers in Ontario in 2016, the BVT honeybee system uniformly delivered the BVT-CR7 biological control agent to the crop and produced a 31% increase in yield for the grower. Additional work in 2016 treating sunflowers in the US with BVT-CR7 using bumblebees showed effective suppression of sclerotinia, a devastating and costly disease in sunflowers, and one for which there is currently no viable protective solution. More trials of the honeybee system are scheduled for 2017 on sunflowers and other crops.
"This new honeybee delivery system, together with BVT's proprietary crop protection products, represents a significant additional market opportunity for the company. Honeybees are already used to pollinate many large-acre outdoor crops. In the US, the value of crops that benefit from pollination by honeybees is close to $20 billion, and in California alone there are almost a million acres of almond trees that rely on approximately one million honeybee hives every year for pollination." stated Ashish Malik, CEO of BVT. "We will be continuing to test our new system in field conditions this year and making further refinements to the design based on testing data if and where required."
The patent application for the honeybee delivery system represents the start of a 5th patent family for the company. BVT is pursuing an aggressive IP strategy with over 60 patent applications worldwide. It has received approval on 11 of these patents in 7 countries worldwide covering 4 patent families. The remaining patents are pending.
The honeybee program is part of the Company's documented growth strategy whereby it will selectively expand its market opportunities while it continues down the path towards securing EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) regulatory approval of its BVT-CR7 beneficial microbe and drives towards commercialization of its proprietary system designed to work with bumblebees.
Source: Bee Vectoring Technologies
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