Mycotech Corp. Insect-Killing Fungus Attracts Wide Interest, But Supplier Needs A Factory

A Butte company has harnessed a common fungus to consume some of the world’s most devastating crop pests, then disappear without so much as a burp.

Now Mycotech Corp. is preparing to bid for a share of the $7 billion global market for agricultural chemicals. Its problem now: While its product is the darling of the moment, Mycotech has no ability to mass produce it.

Mycotech’s pet fungus, known by its trade name, Mycotrol, was certified this spring by the Environmental Protection Agency for use against a host of pests, including grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, locusts, aphids and thrips.

But its prime target is the whitefly, which feasts on crops ranging from cotton to the succulent melons and vegetables of California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. In California’s Imperial Valley alone, losses average $320 million a year.

Mycotrol destroys the pest but does not harm crops, beneficial insects, animals, people or the environment. And when its job is done, it disappears.

“Our big problem was keeping it alive long enough to kill insects,” said company President Robert Kearns.

With Mycotrol, said U.S. Agriculture Department researcher Raymond Carruthers, growers could use a chemical pesticide once to knock down initial infestations, “then they would spray just the fungus about every week or so, depending on how severe the infestation is.”

The fungus is sprayed in a solution that includes a wetting agent that helps fungus spores stick to leaves. When spores touch an immature whitefly, or nymph, they germinate and release natural chemicals that bore holes through the nymph’s skin. Enzymes from the invading fungus dissolve the fly’s fat reserves. Within days, the nymph weakens and dies.

Four years of tests in the United States, Canada and Africa found that Mycotrol killed more than 80 percent of the target insects. Agriculture Department researchers say it could help growers of melons, cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

The cost should be about the same as for chemical pesticides, $10 to $12 per acre, Kearns said. But unlike chemicals, its victims cannot become immune to it.

EPA approved Mycotrol for commercial use in March, the first fungal pesticide it has ever approved for agricultural use. The only other fungal product the EPA has ever approved was aimed at cockroaches.

Word of the EPA approval swept through the agricultural community, and queries rolled in. A montage on Mycotech’s laboratory door here trumpets articles from dozens of agricultural publications ranging from the Society for Invertebrate Pathology to the Farm Times, California Farmer and World Crop Protection News.

But Mycotech has nothing to sell. Its 22 employees in rented parts of three Butte buildings can produce only 3,000 pounds of Mycotrol a month, barely enough to meet research commitments.

The company is trying to raise $3.8 million to build a plant to produce 21,000 pounds a month in time for next fall’s melon and fruit harvest in the Southwest and Mexico.

Mycotrol was developed from one of the 200,000 strains of a fungus known as Beauvaria bessiana, which is found all over the world and has long been known as a killer of insect pests. The Chinese used it 200 years ago.

The Chinese method was crude, but fun. They filled pits beside crop fields with fungus-killed insects, then blew up the piles to scatter spores over the crops. In more modern times the Chinese loaded spore material into mortar shells and exploded them overhead.

Mycotech’s delivery system is less fun, but more effective. Mycotrol is simply sprayed on crops with conventional equipment, and it can be mixed with chemical pesticides.

A single spore of B. bessiana is 2 microns wide - 2 millionths of a meter, or finer than flour, Kearns said. A pound of Mycotrol contains 200 trillion spores.

While working on production facilities, Mycotech also is looking at other varieties of fungi, and other uses. Kearns said company researchers have identified almost 30 patent possibilities and have filed for eight.