Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Dust BioSolutions (Weed control in row crop farming through natural biocementation) Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2019-11-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project Dust BioSolutions is developing a new product for weed control within the European agriculture industry based on a bio-geochemical process that solidifies permeable materials through microbiologically induced calcium carbonate precipitation. “BioWeedControl” is facing the pressing problems of weed resistance, soil erosion and the increased adoption of Integrated Pest Management practices by farmers. In this project, Dust BioSolutions has tuned the final product development roadmap to advance to TRL9 and to scale up industrial production. In addition, an analysis of target markets and main drivers that will fuel the client adoption of our new weed control technology has been performed. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far In the technical part, we established the roadmap to advance BioWeedControl to TRL-9 and analysed the most important technical risks (incl. mitigation actions). In the commercial part, we analyzed the crop protection industry and the main drivers that will fuel BioWeedControl adoption in target segements. We tuned our commercialization plan for wide market adoption focusing on markets where our technology will be valued the most. We performed a thorough Freedom to Operate analysis which confirmed that our technology does not infringe any IPR. Our competition analysis validated our lead over existing herbicide products. From the financial side, we tuned our pricing strategy, we calculated the necessary investment to launch BioWeedControl in the market and we projected our revenues during the commercialization period. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) Our technology provides a unique solution to the pressing problems of weed resistance, chemical residuals, retailer pressure and soil erosion, which threaten world’s food supply and reduce our arable land. Specifically, in Europe soil erosion leads to €1.25 billion loss in crop productivity. Moreover, BioWeedControl directly approaches the currently unmet needs of farmers regarding the sustainable use of pesticides and provides an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical herbicides with similar performance and efficiency. Hence, our non-chemical product will form a valuable addition to the farmers’ toolbox to control weeds and will facilitate the adoption of Integrated Pest Management approaches in Europe and across the world. dust-bio.png
