Tag: partnership

18 September 2025

OXFORD, UK & MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.   Moa Technology and Nufarm are pleased to announce the start of the next phase of their collaboration to bring an exciting novel mode of action agricultural herbicide to the global market, reaching this stage over a year earlier than typical industry timelines.

The two companies have together assessed several promising novel mode of action compounds identified by Moa’s GALAXY discovery platform. These have demonstrated strong and consistent efficacy against some of the world’s most damaging and herbicide-resistant weeds over three seasons of field trials in North and South America, Australia and Europe.  Moa and Nufarm are now working together at pace to characterize a broad-spectrum pre-emergence novel mode of action herbicide for selection as lead candidate and preparation for ultimate registration. This comes just 24 months after this novel mode of action area was first classified by Moa’s GALAXY platform and validated in its glasshouses.

Moa and Nufarm’s collaboration began in July 2024, when the two companies announced a research and commercial partnership to create a new, safe and effective herbicide capable of overcoming weed resistance.  Weeds pose a serious threat to crops around the world, and there is urgent demand from farmers for innovative solutions to protect their harvests.

The collaboration deal gave Nufarm exclusive access to a compound in one of Moa’s novel mode of action chemical classes, in return for Moa receiving upfront payments, milestone development payments and eventual royalties from sales of the herbicide.   Nufarm also retains an exclusive first option to commercialise other Moa compounds from the same mode of action area.

The initial research phase of the collaboration has been completed in just twelve months. During the next phase, the two companies will be conducting larger global field trials, crop use and safety studies, human and environmental safety testing, and optimising the product for commercial use.

Commenting on the deal, Moa Technology CEO Dr. Virginia Corless said:

“This outstanding progress shows just what can be achieved with a combination of world leading technology, capable of making novel discoveries at unprecedented speed, and an ambitious and visionary partner like Nufarm, which really understands how the needs of the market are evolving.”

Nufarm CEO Greg Hunt said:

“Working with Moa is a powerful example of how collaboration and partnership can accelerate innovation and bring forward solutions that create real, lasting value for farmers and growers and a more effective way of deploying our capital to improve shareholder returns.”

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About Moa Technology

Spun out of Oxford University in 2017, Moa Technology has developed a proprietary biological platform to discover a whole new generation of synthetic and bio-herbicidal compounds based on novel modes of action, to provide farmers with safe, cost-effective, technologically-advanced solutions at a pace weeds cannot match.  In the last four years, Moa’s platform has already screened over 830,000 compounds and discovered 80 promising novel modes of action areas, with multiple candidates performing strongly and consistently over three seasons of international field trials.

About Nufarm

Nufarm is a global crop protection and seed technologies company that helps farmers and businesses meet the global challenges of food, feed, fibre, and sustainable fuel production. Nufarm brings its proven agility, innovation capabilities, and partnerships to help our its customers in a rapidly changing world. Established over 100 years ago, it is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:NUF) with its head office in Melbourne, Australia. Nufarm is the first company to develop and commercialise plant-based omega-3 and has developed and commercialised advanced bioenergy feedstock technology.

Oxford-based agricultural biotech firm Moa Technology has stepped up the global hunt for a safe, effective and affordable biological herbicide by forming a new partnership with NAICONS, an Italian natural products company.

Moa’s proprietary high-throughput screening platform will rapidly test 70,000 micro-bacterial extracts from NAICONS’ library of natural products, searching for biological leads which could control weeds without being toxic to humans or the environment either as a standalone new herbicide or to enhance the efficacy, safety, and resistance-breaking potential of existing herbicides.

The need for new herbicides to help farmers protect their harvests has never been more urgent, with over 273 species of weeds now resistant to one or more commercially available herbicides. For example, annual crop losses from weeds cost the US economy over $11 billion and the Australian economy over $3.3 billion.  In the UK, the herbicide-resistant weed blackgrass costs farmers around $500 million every year.

To date, Moa’s platforms have screened almost 800,000 synthetic and naturally-occurring compounds, discovering over 70 potentially novel mode of action herbicides. Three synthetic herbicides with novel modes of action discovered by Moa have already performed strongly in their first two seasons of international field trials.

The agreement with NAICONS gives Moa exclusive rights to develop any new herbicides discovered in the library, with value to be shared from future licensing and commercialisation.

Dr Virginia Corless, Chief Executive Officer of Moa Technology, said “Our discovery platform is very well suited to screen natural product libraries, as it provides a reliable and early indication when a compound is too weak or too toxic to become a commercially viable herbicide.  We are looking forward to applying our screening technology to NAICONS’ high-quality library of actinomycete bacteria to see if we can find a biological compound that can help farmers control weeds effectively and sustainably.”

Stefano Donadio, Chief Executive Officer of NAICONS said: “We are very excited about this collaboration. Our library has never been screened for herbicides and we are confident promising lead molecules will be rapidly identified through our powerful micro4all platform. Over 150,000 different molecules have been identified in the extracts sent to Moa and our team is eager to help in identifying the most promising herbicide candidates.”

About Moa:

Spun out of Oxford University in 2017, Moa Technology aims to provide farmers with effective, safe and affordable herbicides to protect their harvests against the toughest and most resistant of weeds.  With our proprietary technology platforms, we have screened over 700,000 synthetic and 100,000 naturally occurring compounds in the last three years, discovering over 70 promising novel mode of action areas.  Our three most advanced novel mode of action herbicides have just completed a second successful season of international field trials.  In July 2024 Moa signed a major partnership with Nufarm to co-develop and commercialise one of these new chemical series.

About NAICONS:

NAICONS Srl (www.naicons.com) is a Milan-based biotech company specializing in the discovery and development of bioactive molecules. Its proprietary micro4all platform integrates a vast and diverse library of actinomycete bacteria, a ready-to-screen extract collection, and an advanced molecular annotation database to accelerate the identification of compounds with applications in human, animal and plant health. With decades of expertise in natural product research, NAICONS collaborates with public and private institutions worldwide to drive innovation in drug discovery, agriculture and biotechnology, unlocking the potential of microbial diversity to develop next-generation solutions.

For more information please contact:

Alexandra Ranson, Head of Corporate Affairs, Moa Technology

Alexandra.ranson@moa-technology.com

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Moa has boosted its bio-herbicide research and development programme with a new long-term collaboration agreement with Biomar Microbial Technologies.

The new collaboration gives Moa access to Biomar’s extensive library of natural marine compounds for the discovery of new herbicides.   Moa is screening the compounds with its proprietary GALAXY platform, seeking those with the potential to help farmers protect their harvests from herbicide-resistant weeds.

“Biomar’s collaboration partnership with Moa is an important addition to our cutting-edge capabilities,” says Virginia Corless, CEO of Moa Technology.  “We believe that the ocean biome is an area of great potential for herbicide discovery, with millions of diverse and unique natural compounds that could help us deliver greater food security on land”.

The $5 billion biopesticide market is growing at around 8% a year, according to industry estimates, as farmers urgently seek better ways to tackle weeds which have become resistant to conventional methods.  Fast-growing herbicide-resistant weeds, such as pigweed, mare’s tail and water hemp, can reduce crop yields by over 50%, threatening staple food supplies for millions of people around the world.

Spun out of the University of Oxford in 2017 to develop new and more sustainable ways to help ensure global food security, Moa today employs over 80 people and is backed by leading agritech and life sciences venture capital firms. Alongside its proprietary biotechnology platforms which work to identify herbicides with novel modes of action (MOAs), Moa deploys state-of-the-art AI/machine learning and operates its own world-class glasshouse testing facilities. Moa already has a diverse pipeline of new herbicides – both biological and synthetic – some of which it is developing on its own, and some with industry partners, such as the recently announced agreement with Nufarm.

Xavier Jacq, Chief Scientific Officer, commented,

“Biomar has a tremendous expertise and longstanding experience in natural product identification and production. The Biomar team is highly competent and with a strong scientific background”.

Antonio Fernandez CEO of Biomar, remarked,

“Our collection of marine natural compounds harvested since the establishment of the company in 1996 is an unparalleled source of chemical diversity, and we believe that the partnership with Moa will allow Biomar to explore the potential of the collection in this exciting new application.

“This collaboration supports Biomar’s strategic vision to promote innovation and sustainability”.

“We are delighted to be working with Moa in order to explore exciting opportunities in this area”.