IN Brief:
- Ginkgo Bioworks and Invaio Sciences have announced a collaboration focused on manufacturing technology for peptide-based agricultural products.
- Invaio said it will use Ginkgo’s engineered microbial strains and fermentation platform to scale peptide production.
- The companies positioned the work as part of a move toward biological crop protection options for persistent pests and diseases.
Ginkgo Bioworks and Invaio Sciences have announced a collaboration to develop microbial strains and fermentation processes intended to improve the efficiency of manufacturing peptide-based crop protection inputs.
In their announcement, the companies described peptide-based crop protection as a route to biological products that can complement, or in some cases provide alternatives to, conventional chemical pesticides. Invaio said growers are seeking inputs to protect crops from pests that are increasingly resistant to established chemistry, and that peptides can meet standards for efficacy, affordability, and ease of use when they can be manufactured at scale.
The partnership is structured around production enablement. Invaio said it will leverage Ginkgo’s platform and microbial strains engineered for protein production, using industrial-scale fermentation as the manufacturing route. Ginkgo said it will optimise strains and fermentation processes to meet Invaio’s production goals, with the work aimed at delivering commercial-scale manufacturing capability for peptide-based products.
Amy O’Shea, chief executive officer of Invaio Sciences, said the focus is on practical scale-up for downstream deployment. “Ginkgo’s technology offers us a clear path to manufacturing our peptides at scale,” she said. “We are excited to partner with Ginkgo to develop much-needed next generation crop protection solutions for persistent pests and diseases.”
The companies did not provide a commercial launch timeline in the announcement, but framed the collaboration as a manufacturing step tied to Invaio’s broader crop protection platform and pipeline development work. Invaio has previously positioned peptides as a crop protection opportunity within a wider “nature-positive” approach to agricultural inputs.
