The Challenge
Farmers are facing a huge challenge: herbicide resistant weeds, which threaten global food security. Our challenge is to find safe and effective herbicides with new modes of action.
The challenge is clear, but there are many hurdles and innovative science and technology must be engaged if these are to be cleared successfully … and in time.
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FoodFarmers must produce more food to feed 9.1 billion people by 2050. Already, 800 million people face hunger and two billion are mal-nourished. More than a third of crop productivity is potentially lost to weeds. Even with today's herbicides, yield losses due to weeds could have provided food for one billion people. We need better herbicides.
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ResistanceWeed resistance has become a major issue for crop production, threating global food security. The root of the problem is the difficulty in finding new herbicide modes of action. Today resistance is present in more than 250 weed species infesting nearly 100 crops and affecting 23 of the 26 known herbicide modes of action.
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EnvironmentProducing more food cannot be at the cost of damaging the environment. The best way to minimise the environmental footprint of farming is through intensification that uses the least amount of land, which in turn leads to less deforestation and frees up more land for nature reserves to maintain biodiversity.
MoA Platforms
At MoA Technology our ambition is to discover the next generation of sustainable herbicide chemistries with new modes of action from both natural and synthetic sources.
Three proprietary platforms have been developed: (1) MoA GALAXY™, (2) MoA TARGET™ and (3) MoA SELECT™, all powerful in their own right, but when used in combination offer the opportunity to revolutionize the early herbicide discovery process.
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MoA GALAXY™MoA GALAXY™ allows the simultaneous discovery of new herbicides and their modes of action. Data from the unique, proprietary, in vivo HTS platform is digitized and exploited by artificial intelligence to create a 'fingerprint'. MoA GALAXY™ can rapidly identify known and unknown modes of action associated with the new chemistries being screened at a scale, speed and cost previously unavailable.
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MoA TARGET™
MoA TARGET™ uses a unique in vivo plant based genomic patented process to identify the precise target protein associated with the new mode of action, which is responsible for the novel chemistry’s herbicidal activity. This predicts safety to humans and the environment, and assists in the discovery of more effective analogues for this mode of action.
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MoA SELECT™MoA SELECT™ validates the mode of action and the efficacy of the test chemistries in a single in vivo assay. Active ingredients discovered by MoA SELECT™ can provide both new structurally unrelated and diverse starting points for further traditional lead optimization. This allows broad patent coverage of the new area of chemistry to be quickly and efficiently established.
- MoA Approach
MoA Technology has three innovative herbicide discovery platforms designed to pinpoint new modes of action from both natural and synthetic sources. Screening in all three platforms is based on an in vivo plant model: a much better predictor of herbicide activity than standard in vitro models.
- Work with MoA Technology
We are looking for:
A Screening and Automation Research Technician – MoA GALAXYTM
A Senior Research Technician - Target ID
A Senior/Principal Scientist - Computational Chemistry
Please send a CV and cover letter to hr@moa-technology.com