Natural Biological Herbicide From Mint Extract

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Biological products are are showing up more and more as potential tools for fertility, pesticides and even fungicides, but there has been very little that are effective in weed management. Harpe Bio hopes to change that in the coming years with their novel, natural biological herbicide portfolio derived from plant extracts. Daniel Pepitone is a co-founder and COO.

Pepitone… “We've heard the term bioherbicide as the holy Grail. We haven't seen new modes of action in decades out of the larger players in the market. So offering that kind of solution is really what we were targeting. It just happens to be that the chemistry we're working with is natural, so everything we work with is out of plant extract based. Our main crop that we use is mint, and it really is the compounds that you find in the mint there that we formulate in different ways. Pre-emergent post burndown or desiccation product. So we're able to really tap into nature's chemistry instead of chemistry off a bench. It just really is those compounds that we find in these plants that we're able to really turn into a whole suite of herbicides.”

Pepitone says their trials are showing that the products are effective against a wide spectrum of weed species.

Pepitone… “Grasses are always harder to kill than broadleafs just by their architecture. But the chemistry is fully non-selective meaning broadleaf grasses.”

Learn more at Harpebio.com.