From plants to vaccines
BSI has further developed its botanical pesticide and ventured into vaccine adjuvants as well . Andrew Warmington met with CEO Gaston Salinas
Botanical Solution ( BSI ) has its origins in work by Chilean academic biologist Gustavo Zúñiga . He found that lab-grown versions of the Quillaja saponaria tree , which is native only to Chile , generated specific phenolic compounds with fungicidal activity . The tree itself develops some of these compounds in its bark as it matures , but the amount and precise contents it generates vary considerably .
Together with Gaston Salinas , the firm ’ s CEO , which Zúñiga co-founded in 2013 , they patented the technique and continued to refine it by putting the plantlets under different stress conditions , such as varying media culture composition , light exposure , and temperature . This eventually led to the first commercial product , Quillibrium botanical biofungicide .
Quillibrium is a 10 % extract from tissue-cultured Quillaja saponaria plantlets . They are inoculated into bioreactor systems at 3-60 days of age , so that they grow rapidly and in the right conditions to produce the secondary metabolites responsible for biological activity . Field tests showed Quillibrium to be highly efficacious in the prevention and control of Botrytis cinerea , especially for blueberries , vine crops and vegetables .
Aided by a ‘ soft landing ’ programme sponsored by the University of California Davis , Salinas moved to the US in 2019 . This has given BSI much wider access to talent , because Davis is one of the world centres of agricultural research , as well as to investors who understand the market . an agreement with Syngenta to commercialise Quillibrium in Peru and Mexico . Through this work , it learned that Quillibrium works equally well on powdery mildew , alternaria , sour rot and many other pre- and postharvest diseases .
After Chile itself , the US was the next big target . At the time registration was simpler and faster to obtain here than in the other regional giant agro market of Brazil . However , this has changed : the EPA is now demanding more documentation , while Brazil has reduced the regulatory hurdles for biologicals and shortened the approval times , sometimes to as little as 9-12 months .
Not only that , the costs per hectare of treating crops with biologicals are now lower than for synthetics , despite the much smaller scale on which the former are manufactured . Biologicals , says Salinas , are now able to compete with synthetics in major crops like corn and soy in Brazil .
For the EU , which has even more stringent requirements than the US ,
BSI is putting together a study plan in order to be compliant with regulation there . It expects to submit a first registration in 2025 , though this will be a longer , more expensive process than in the Americas .
In 2023 alone , BSI screened 114 different plant species for potential uses in biocontrol . It is now focused on building a pipeline of new products , including bioherbicides , bioinsecticides and bionematicides , all of which are grown using the same technology platform . It will file patents on applications as they come out .
“ We are on the path from being a single-product company to becoming a portfolio company ,” Salinas says . “ We are also becoming fully independent from natural sources of raw materials , while other companies continue to rely on them .”
Also in 2023 , BSI opened two new R & D laboratories at Davis . Its current R & D efforts are based on a molecular breeding programme for Quillaja saponaria . “ The raw materials that come out of that programme
International growth
Next year , the company secured two rounds of funding from multiple banks and ‘ angel ’ investors , then reached
Quillaja saponica plantlet
40 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981