Impetus Agriculture closed a $1 million seed round today. Investors include BioGenerator, The Yield Lab and KWS . The St. Louis based startup is designing new insect control products for food crops.
Brian Clevenger, The Yield Lab General Partner
“Impetus is addressing a huge problem: pests are becoming more resistant to pesticides,” Yield Lab General Partner Brian Clevenger told the 4thEst8. “I think in general we are all better off if there are less chemical pesticides – and biological is probably the best way going forward.”
Some science:
There are common biological pesticides being used today. One is called bacillus thuringiensis (Bt for short) It is a soil-dwelling bacterium, and it makes proteins that are toxic to some insects when eaten. The proteins are not toxic to humans because, like all mammals, we cannot activate them. Unfortunately, mutations in the receptor that Bt plugs into have made some formerly susceptible insects immune to the toxic protein.
Impetus is designing new insect control products that enhance the effects of Bt. The company has demonstrated in the laboratory that it can enhance the control of several insects, using several proteins.
A “platform”:
Martha Schlicher, Impetus CEO
“First, what we did was show we could enhance the performance of one Bt protein against one insect,” Impetus CEO Martha Schlicher told the 4thEst8. “Companies spend millions of dollars to come up with one solution, and if we can show that our platform can be used to improve different proteins against different insects without having to go back to square one… I can use this one approach to come up with multiple solutions.”
With this funding Impetus brings aboard Dr. Brian McNulty as Chief Technology Officer. He will establish laboratories in the 39 North Agtech Innovation District. He spent the last 15 years at Bayer, Monsanto and Athenix.
Impetus Agriculture was founded 2017. This is it’s second seed round, but numbers were not immediately available for the first round. Today’s seed round was also participated in by St. Louis Arch Angels, Centennial Investors, Missouri Technology Corporation, and the University of Missouri Allen Angel Capital Education Fund. Schlicher serves as CEO for Impetus Agriculture, and 4thEst8 readers know her as the CEO of Plastomics. Both roles fall under her job as Executive in Residence at BioGenerator.
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