£5 MILLION FURTHER INVESTMENT INTO OXFORD AGRI-TECH SPINOUT

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that farmers need to produce 60 per cent more food by 2050. That means 42 per cent more cropland will be needed.

While herbicides have been key to enabling food production to keep pace with population growth, many think the key to global food security is sustainable intensification.

One company driving the technology to achieve this is MoA Tech, a company spun out of Oxford University in 2018.

MoA Tech’s herbicide discovery platforms are now entering field testing.

Since the 1940s, new active ingredients from more than 25 di erent modes of action have flowed from research and development in crop protection discovery companies and crop yields have soared as a result. (A mode of action is a biological process that the herbicide interrupts, a ecting normal plant growth).

However, no significant new herbicide modes of action have been commercialised for more than three decades. As a result weeds are get the upper hand as herbicide resistance spreads across the globe.

In April, MoA Tech announced two new investors which further the company’s

Series A funding round by £5 million. Shanghai-based agriculture and food tech venture capital company Bits x Bites and BGF, the UK’s growth economy companies investor, have joined earlier investors bringing the total raised to around £12 million.

Bits x Bites became interested in MoA Tech and its potential new herbicide which could help it fight the threat to Chinese agriculture of resistant weeds.

MoA Tech CEO, Dr Virginia Corless said: "This funding will support the expansion and acceleration of our discovery programme, which will deliver new herbicides to benefit farmers worldwide."