Articles

The world’s food supply is facing a devastating and escalating threat from an invisible enemy: fungal pathogens. These resilient and highly adaptable organisms are responsible for immense crop losses, destabilising global food security and national economies. 

While chemical fungicides have long been our primary defence, the widespread use of single-target-site treatments has initiated an "arms race" where pathogens are constantly evolving resistance, rendering our most potent tools ineffective over time.

This economic and ecological crisis, often managed through outdated, reactive methods, costs the industry billions and poses a significant threat to global food security.

This growing crisis highlights a critical need for a new strategy, one that moves beyond reacting to crop disease and toward proactively preventing it. The solution lies in the fusion of technology and biology, enabling farmers to make smarter, more effective, and more sustainable decisions before a problem becomes a crisis.

The Broader Landscape of Agrochemicals
The public's perception of agricultural chemicals often focuses narrowly on pesticides, but the reality is that the agrochemical market is a complex, multi-billion-dollar industry dominated by fertilisers. The global agrochemical market was valued at USD 352.06 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 491.69 billion by 2032. Fertilisers are the dominant economic force within this market, holding a commanding 65-67% share of the total revenue in 2022.

Beyond fertilisers, the primary category of agrochemicals is pesticides, which includes herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. By volume, herbicides lead the market, with over 1.8 million metric tons applied globally in 2023, followed by insecticides at over 1.2 million metric tons, and fungicides exceeding 800,000 metric tons. Geographically, the market is concentrated, with the Asia-Pacific region being the largest consumer of agricultural chemicals, using over

2.2 million metric tons in 2023, and commanding 48.5% of the global market size.

The scale of the problem is staggering. Fungal pathogens pose the "greatest biotic challenge to our calorie crops". Despite widespread use of antifungals, growers worldwide lose an estimated

10 to 23 percent of their crops pre-harvest, with an additional 10-20 percent lost post-harvest. The food lost to fungal diseases is equivalent to what could feed between 600 million and 4 billion people annually. Experts warn that this worrying trend will worsen as global warming causes fungal infections to move polewards, with wheat stem rust, a disease typically found in the tropics, now being reported in Ireland and England. Professor Sarah Gurr of the University of Exeter stated that this threat is not about science fiction but about "global starvation".

This crisis is compounded by a "perfect storm" of factors: fungi are incredibly resilient and adaptable, with airborne spores that can travel between continents. Modern farming practices, which rely on vast areas of genetically uniform crops, provide the ideal feeding and breeding grounds for these fast-evolving organisms.

The intensive use of antifungal treatments that target a single fungal cellular process has hastened the emergence of new virulent and resistant strains, forcing farmers to use ever-higher concentrations of fungicide, which in turn accelerates the development of resistance.

The financial damage caused by fungi to just three major crops, rice, wheat, and maize—amounts to approximately $60 billion per year. In the UK alone, a single wheat disease, Septoria tritici, costs the agriculture sector an estimated £132–264 million annually in direct crop losses. On a wider scale, the total economic impact of pesticide resistance in the United States was calculated at $1.5 billion in 2005, a figure that, when adjusted for inflation, amounts to approximately $2.5 billion today. This is a classic "common resource pool" problem, where the actions of one farmer can affect an entire region, creating a "tragedy of the commons".

Further compounding this crisis is the inherent inefficiency of conventional chemical application. A significant portion of the £60 billion spent annually on pesticides is wasted, as a majority of sprayed chemicals never reach their target, becoming environmental pollutants through wind drift and runoff. 

This represents a major financial loss for farmers and contributes directly to the contamination of soil and water. The persistence of these chemicals in the environment, measured by their half-life, is also a critical challenge, with a single chemical having a highly variable half-life depending on environmental factors like soil type and temperature. 

For example, the herbicide glyphosate can have a half-life in soil ranging from a few days to over a hundred days, and its breakdown product, AMPA, can be even more persistent. This inefficiency highlights a fundamental problem that requires a technological solution.

In a world where food security and sustainability are urgent priorities, the traditional model of crop protection is a relic of the past. The costly, time-consuming process of waiting for visible symptoms and sending samples to a distant lab leads to significant financial risk, wasted chemicals, and compromised yields. 

Traditionally, identifying a pathogen and its resistance profile relied on a series of reactive steps:

• Pest Monitoring and Scouting: Regularly inspecting crops to detect early signs of disease.
• Pest Identification Guides: Using resources to help identify the specific disease-causing symptoms.
• Expert Consultation: Consulting with agricultural experts or extension services to provide a diagnosis.
• Advanced Diagnostics: In some cases, laboratory testing is required to identify the pathogen.

This reactive model operates on a delay, a window of time during which a pathogen can spread unchecked, reducing the effectiveness of interventions and accelerating the evolution of resistance.

This is the gap that a new category of technology is built to fill. While others are still discussing possibilities, OptiGene is a fully integrated company that is not merely entering the agri-tech industry; we are providing a new foundation for modern diagnostics. 

We are not a startup with an aspirational plan; we are a mature company with a war chest, committing over £5 million over the next five years to bring our product to market. This investment is a statement of commitment and a clear signal of our confidence in a completely new category of technology that will disrupt the industry.

The solution is real-time, in-field, pre-symptomatic molecular diagnostics. The technology gives farmers, growers, and agronomists lab-level certainty in just 30 minutes, allowing them to make critical, data-driven decisions before a problem becomes a crisis. 

This is the essence of our “Grow Smarter” philosophy, a fundamental shift from simply managing problems to proactively predicting and preventing them.

The power of this new technology is best illustrated by its application in the field. In a recent case study, the Winter Wheat ‘Grow Smarter Playbook,’ we collaborated with a major agri-business firm to develop a system that detects the specific mutation type of a plant pathogen.

This is where the magic happens. By understanding the pathogen’s specific mutation, farmers can precision-target it with the correct fungicide, avoiding unnecessary chemical applications and protecting the crop more effectively. 

This is not just about crop protection; it’s a critical step toward reducing chemical waste, preventing millions of litres of chemical runoff each year, and, most importantly, slowing the development of fungicide resistance. The ability to give farmers this level of precise, actionable intelligence is a transformative step that can have a direct, measurable impact on both profitability and sustainability.

For agri-business leaders and investors, the promise of this technology is twofold: economic resilience and environmental stewardship. 

The global agrochemical market, valued at over USD 352 billion in 2023, is ripe for disruption by solutions that can reduce waste and improve efficiency. Our technology directly addresses this, providing a path to sustainable food production without compromising yields.

The era of blind application is over. The future of agriculture is about data-driven precision, economic resilience, and true sustainability. Protecting the world’s crops from fungal disease will require a far more unified approach, bringing together farmers, the agricultural industry, plant breeders, biologists, governments, policymakers, and funders. 

By investing in on-site diagnostics, we are empowering every stakeholder in the food supply chain to participate in this unified effort, protecting yields, optimising resources, and securing a more resilient future. 

OptiGene's technology is not just an innovation; it's the foundation for a smarter, more profitable, and sustainable world.

Connect with the OptiGene team during the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit at London's InterContinental - O2 to find out more.