An independent test of Renaissance BioScience Corp. environmentally safe, RNA-based biopesticide technology conducted on Colorado potato beetle (CPB) larvae resulted in 98.3% mortality and greatly reduced the amount of plant damage caused by the beetle.

“Positive Environmental Impact, Sustainable – Yeast-based RNA production and oral delivery technology for crop protection is environmentally safe and uses RNAi to precisely target specific genes in specific pests, avoiding broad-spectrum damage to other organisms or the soil, water, and air,” according to a recent company press release.

The proof-of-concept test, conducted by a leading international agriculture consultancy with expertise in pesticide evaluation, applied Renaissance’s proprietary yeast-based RNA interference technology that is designed to precisely target and turn off a specific CPB gene. This, in turn, resulted in high CPB mortality and protected the potato plant.

“A key characteristic and industrial benefit of the Renaissance novel proprietary RNA production and oral delivery platform technology is that it’s possible to include multiple different gene targets in each cell of the delivery system, thereby greatly reducing or eliminating the potential for CPB to develop resistance to this innovative biopesticide,” the company’s experts added.

Renaissance BioScience CEO, Dr. John Husnik, said that Renaissance’s RNA production and oral delivery platform technology is not only potentially efficient as a biopesticide against a wide variety of different pests but also has significant promising applications in human and animal healthcare, including aquaculture.

“Yeast has been an amazing natural workhorse for human civilization for thousands of years, and we are applying it to develop many new exciting applications in environmentally safe biopesticides and biotherapeutics for the future,” Husnik mentioned.

The Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) is one of the most economically devastating pests facing potato crops in North America and Mexico, Europe, Russia, and Eastern Europe, and in Asia, including in western and northeastern China.

As the world’s leading producers of potatoes, China and India are at the leading frontier of CPB spread as it expands its range eastward. The CPB has a legendary ability to develop resistance to a wide range of chemical pesticides previously used in its control and a natural biopesticide solution is urgently needed to greatly reduce the widespread damage and major economic costs caused by this pest.