1st Breakout Session - Red Team: G. Hamilton, Leader
List opportunities for commercialization of biocontrol.
- Provide parasites.
- Pay for scouting.
- Combine fungal agents and antagonists in the same process.
- Crop insurance policies.
- Post-harvest diseases.
- Develop new partners for FQPA ramifications (fill gaps created).
- Better in vitro production of NPVs.
- Animal health products.
- Nematodes for darkling beetles in chicken houses.
- Fungal pathogens for ant and cockroach control.
- Education - change consumer standards.
- Biological control agents as a gene source for biotech.
- Target minor or high value crops.
- Integrated production guidelines enforced by the food industry (IPM labeling).
- Vertical integration.
- Value added (inoculated) plant material.
- Improve consumer awareness.
- Combine biological control agents with other techniques.
- Biological control technicians - monitor and release.
- Improve availability.
- Private/government partnerships - matching funds.
- ARC program model for commercializing BC agent - profits returned for research, call for proposals, budget item, small to midsize companies.
- More research for finding more virulent wild strains.
- Sales form garden centers.
- More stable nematode products; novel techniques.
- Biological control advocacy groups.
- Genetically engineered insects as control agents - include suicide genes to avoid environmental impacts - do same for pest population.
- Develop field testing models for use by small companies.
- Tax pesticides - earmark for biological control.
- Better assessment tools re: if, when, and what to release.
- Grower cooperatives.
- Increase government control.
- Improve biological control shelf life.
- Change delivery systems to grower.
Identify five of these opportunities that are novel and have potential for development in the next ten years.
- Combine fungal agents and antagonists into one process to reduce production costs.
- Crop insurance related to the use of BC agents.
- Development of Animal Health Markets
- Value added system - Sale of plants inoculated with BC agents
- Use of Alternative Agricultural Research and Commercialization grants as a model for joint funding of new products.
Using the opportunities as a starting point, identify the key legal issues as ramifications that will play a role, one way or the other, in the effective commercialization of biocontrol. List key obstacles and identify the most important. Who or what could resolve obstacles? (For example, consider protection of intellectual property through patents or copyrights; authorities, liabilities, regulatory issues.)
- Quality control liability solved by industry
- Environmental Safety - EPA/APHIS
- Enabling legislation/policy development
Identify the key financial or business issues that will play a role, one way or the other, in the effective commercialization of biocontrol. List key obstacles and identify the three most important. Who or what could resolve obstacles? (For example, consider start-up costs, profit margin, client base, economics of scale, competition, markets.)
- Capital investment (private and public).
- Critical mass.
- perceived versus real client base.
Identify the key scientific and technological issues that will play a role one way or the other, in the effective commercialization of biocontrol. List key obstacles and identify the three most important. Who or what could resolve obstacles? (For example, consider available technology; employee, client and environmental safety; geographical scope of product or service.)
- Delivery systems.
- Shelf life.
Identify the key education and communication issues that will play a role one way or the other, in the effective commercialization of biocontrol. List key obstacles and identify the most important. Who or what could resolve obstacles? (For example, consider user education/market changes; user, extension, and regulation education; public relations and marketing strategies.)
- Misidentification of biological control agent as pest.
- Confusion by public.
- Integration of biological control into current system.
- Education of government officials.
- Consumer awareness.
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