An Israeli startup is on a mission to make the process of using pesticides safer, more environmentally friendly and longer lasting – and has developed a new way to get the active ingredients to the crops, replacing traditional toxic sprays.
Tel Aviv-based startup Platypus has created a delivery agent to which pesticide companies can add their product before it is introduced directly to the crops.
The debut product Platyform is a ready-to-use gel that slowly releases added compounds such as essential oils and pheromones, driving away insects that prey on plants over a greater time period.
“The evaporation of these pheromones today [takes] on average 10 to 12 weeks,” Platypus co-founder and CEO Gilad Yarkoni, a polymer engineer and designer product specialist, tells No Camels.
“We want to prolong it to 24 weeks and then you get the full season so it’s more cost effective to the farmer.”
Pesticides are known for quickly losing their effectiveness in protecting crops and having detrimental effects on the surrounding environment.
Commonly used pesticide permethrin, for example, only has a half life (when it has lost half of its potency) of 40 days when administered to soil.
And according to the US National Pesticide Information Center, traditional pesticides may become airborne, leak into the soil, enter bodies of water or even be absorbed by plants and ingested by animals.
Platypus’ gel is biodegradable and designed to be more effective on pests than traditional solutions, the company states. The gel is placed underneath or next to the crop – avoiding direct contact – and its thick consistency prevents the active pesticides from leaching into the surrounding environment.
Yarkoni says Platyform offers multiple ways to carry out the pesticide treatment without the need for spraying or coating – the two traditional methods.
“In a greenhouse, you can put the gel in a small container and it will fume around to repel insects, it can be in the field,” he explains.
“It can also use pheromones in traps to catch the pests, or create some kind of a barrier around trees to deter snails.”
The company was founded three years ago by Yarkoni along with Marina Arsgavsky Rosental, who recently joined as co-founder and CBO. Its name is an homage to the multi-faceted and unique features of the unusual mammal.
Originally intending to create active pesticide ingredients, the company pivoted to address the issue of delivering pesticides to crops and facilitating a more efficient and sustainable agricultural solution.
The company recently received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority to help fund six months of technology validation in greenhouses and beehives across the country.
Due to start the trials in the coming days, the company aims to prove its ability to provide prolonged delivery of pheromones and control pests such as the varroa mite – one of the world’s most dangerous threats to bees.
The company has devised a B2B business model, intending to market Platyform to pesticide producers whose current products must navigate a lengthy approval process.
Because it is a non-active delivery agent, Platypus aims to reduce the time it will take its pesticide company partners to receive regulatory approval. This is because the companies will be changing the delivery mechanism and not seeking approval for an entirely new pesticide.
“We can cooperate with big companies and small companies, and they can use our gel with our technology for their new products, to speed up the 12 years [of regulation approval] and shorten it to five to nine years,” Yarkoni says.
Once the trials are completed satisfactorily, the company aims to market its product primarily in Europe.
In the future, Platypus aims for their gel solution to also enter markets such as food storage and sanitization, as the biodegradable and natural features of the product make it safe for animal ingestion and capable of deploying anti-bacterial agents.
“Platypus aims to bring together ecology, materials, engineering, production, R&D, logistics, and everything else into one functional, unique solution,” Yarkoni says.
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