The new initiative getting biologicals to market quicker

In Australia, it can cost millions to develop and deploy a biological product - and capital raises and corporate budgets don’t always cover their full journey to commercialisation.

However, an initiative by Charles Sturt Universities’ AgriPark could soon streamline the process, making it cheaper and easier to validate scientific breakthroughs and put them in the hands of end users.

Executive Director, Pip Grant, says the BioSolutions Hub – due to start trials in 2027 - has so far been welcomed by industry and biological manufacturers, many of whom are struggling to validate new biological products or integrate them into commercial farming systems.

“There is enormous potential in biological and novel inputs, and industry knows that we need new tools to keep our farmers globally competitive – but it can be enormously expensive to bring these technologies to market due to the variability in farming systems and the confidence needed by end users to make the initial investment.

“For example, if you are trialling a microbial strain for a potential biostimulant, you are moving through labs, glasshouses, to small plots, on-farm experiments, and demonstrations, on multiple sites, with multiple variables.

“The small plot step alone can cost over a $1m per growing season to get the dataset to a commercial level. If you are trying to do this for multiple strains in multiple markets, with high variability – it simply becomes too expensive."

Broader economic benefit

Globally, investors have grown more conscious of product development pathways, with some exiting the market because of protracted timeframes.

While overall venture capital has increased across the industry, rebounding to its highest first-half level since 2022, early-stage funding has noticeably slumped.

Pip said the initiative will bring economies of scale, de-risk bringing new technologies to market, and lift its appeal in the eyes of both investors and end users.

“We are pulling together people, resources, and equipment to build a national-scale validation pipeline. This will get products to market faster and more cost-effectively, so that we, as a nation, are easy to work with from a new inputs perspective,” she said.

“At the end of the day, we want Australian farmers to have the best technologies available - and that will take a team approach.”

Identifying stage gates

To identify where support is needed, the BioSolutions Hub partners have looked at development through a series of stage gates. The steps that it takes to bring a new input to market – each step designed to increase confidence in product efficacy and understanding of stewardship.

“With a biostimulant process, you'll go from genetic sequencing of a microbial strain, and you'll move from lab to glasshouse. From there, they will go into small plot trials. If they're showing statistically significant data in the small plot trials, they'll probably go into a strip trial (on-farm experiments) and then into field-scale demos.

“These stage gates are progressively challenging and where we're not seeing consistent translation is between small plots and strip or paddock scale demonstrations. That's where we're getting a lot of variability – it’s not just things like climate, soil types, or disease pressure, often it is application mode, equipment, timing, and interaction with other inputs.

“So, tightening everything up in that stage gate will enable more sophisticated trial protocols, using better technology, to elicit better data.”

End-user focus

As well as boosting investor confidence, the initiative will give end users and their advisors the tools and knowledge to decide which products are best for them.

The BioSolutions Hub and partners are building data to give end users a realistic sense of what outcomes they can achieve with particular products and discern where products will and won’t work for them.

“We are moving beyond a scientific threshold and into a commercial threshold, where agronomists, advisors or farmers can rely on these products. We want them to know how to use them in their system and understand the stewardship that different products will require.

“We want agronomists to have confidence that they won’t do professional damage to themselves by recommending a product – we want farmers to have the confidence to know where they will get the ROI on new technologies.”

Progress so far

With their eyes on the 2027 horizon, Pip and team are currently identifying products and partners to work with, claiming the initiative will be a “big team sport” with many partners bringing different experience, technical capability, and resources to the challenge.

Already, Charles Sturt University is working with agribusiness leaders, Elders, and bringing more partners from science, research, commercial product development, along with extension and adoption networks to the BioSolutions Hub.

However, further partners are needed to run multi-environment trial sites and scale-up the initiative to meet industry needs.

“It’s been a case of learning who has the skills, facilities and capability across Australia to bring the economies of scale, and create efficiencies in the system. We are looking for strong alignment because we know we're not the only ones needing more reliability in these product classes. So, it’s about finding like-minded people and getting them at the one table.

“But so far there has been excellent consensus across industry. We’ve all been trying to do this for quite a few years now. So, it has been quick and easy to find people who understand the friction points and who are willing to help solve them.”

What’s around the corner?

Sharing more on this important work by AgriPark and partners, Pip Grant will talk at the upcoming Biolnputs Australia Conference, on October 21-22 at the Crown Promenade Melbourne.

This year’s event will feature speakers such as Stephen Annels, CEO of Fertiliser Australia, David McKeon, Head of Sustainable Agriculture at Elders and Dr Nirodha Weeraratne of the Gulbali Institute, Charles Start University.

Learn more and register your place here.