Hey readers, welcome back!

Plenty to get into this week: BASF brings biological fermentation in-house, Australia releases a rust fungus against a damaging weed, and a Bacillus strain from China takes on a chemical nematicide. Plus an event worth the trip in Campinas, Brazil this month.

For years the largest agrochemical companies sold biologicals without making the active ingredients themselves, relying on external fermentation partners to supply the microorganisms. BASF just changed that for its own portfolio. On May 11 the company commissioned the BioHub, a fermentation plant at its Ludwigshafen site built specifically for biological and biotechnology-based crop protection, with an investment in the high double-digit millions of euros (BASF, May 11 2026).

The plant is already producing two commercial actives. One is Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, the bacteria behind the biological fungicide Serifel, and the other is the main building block of Inscalis, an insecticide derived from the fungal strain Penicillium coprobium.

BASF was explicit that producing in-house ties its research directly to industrial manufacturing, which lets it move biotechnological innovations to market faster, gives it more flexibility, and makes its supply chains less dependent on outside partners.

When a company of this scale makes a structural call like this, control over how and where their biologicals get made is clearly becoming part of the competition, not just an operational detail.

African boxthorn is one of Australia's worst agricultural weeds, a drought-tolerant invader that forms thorny thickets across farmland and resists almost everything thrown at it. In March, CSIRO released the first biological agent capable of fighting it: Puccinia rapipes, a rust fungus (CSIRO, March 24 2026).

Host-specificity testing showed it safe for release with no risk to native plants. Instead of running a contained agency program, CSIRO is handing free biocontrol kits to registered farmers, First Nations groups and Landcare members, who release the fungus themselves. Principal research scientist Ben Gooden called it a first-time release at national scale for this agent.

If it works on boxthorn, the same approach (a host-specific pathogen reared in bulk and released by the people who work the land) could be used against the next invasive weed.

The bioinputs sector meets in Campinas this month. Biocontrol & Biostimulants LATAM 2026 runs July 27 to 29 at the Royal Palm Hall, with pre-event workshops on the 27th covering regulatory updates for Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Argentina, and the conference and exhibition on the 28th and 29th (New Ag International).

The speakers come from across the sector: the CEOs of Koppert Brasil, Simbiose and Veganic Brazil, along with Corteva Biologicals, Andermatt Biocontrol and BioConsortia, market analysts Dunham Trimmer, and on the regulatory side MAPA, ANVISA and California's Department of Food and Agriculture. For anyone working in biologicals, in Latin America or anywhere else, it is the place to be this month!

Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne incognita) are among the hardest problems in horticulture. They infect more than 5,500 plant species and drive roughly 100 billion dollars in crop losses worldwide each year, and the options keep shrinking as older chemical nematicides are pulled for their toxicity (Scientific Reports, January 2025).

A strain called A-27, a Bacillus velezensis isolated from squash rhizosphere in Shanxi, China, hits the nematode at two points in its life. Its fermentation broth killed all the young nematodes within 24 hours and stopped most of the eggs from hatching. In a pot trial on tomato it cut root damage by 85 percent, more than fosthiazate, the chemical nematicide tested alongside it, and in a field trial on celery it reduced the damage by 67 percent.

A-27 does more than kill the nematode directly. Sequencing of the treated soil showed it reshaping the root's microbial neighborhood, raising beneficial Bacillus and Sphingomonas while cutting the plant pathogens Fusarium, Mortierella and Cephaliophora. It tilts the soil community toward the crop's defense.

This research strain is not a registered product, and the path to a commercial bionematicide runs through industrial fermentation, formulation and a regulatory dossier in each market. But as the chemicals come off the shelf and growers run short of options, a strain that performs like this in the field is one to watch.