With 80,000 microbial treasures, how does Moon Biotech light up the "green future" of agriculture?
The following article comes from 35 Dou, author Li Qin
The increasing shortage of natural resources, climate change, and increasingly healthy consumer demands are all forcing the transformation and upgrading of traditional agriculture.
The development of microbial agriculture is conducive to the transformation of traditional agriculture with a "two-dimensional structure" (plants and animal resources) into a new type of agriculture with a "three-dimensional structure" (plant planting industry, animal breeding industry, and microbial fermentation and transformation industry), and effectively achieves sustainable development goals such as energy conservation, emission reduction, and ecological civilization.
However, factors such as the abuse of chemical pesticides and deterioration of the soil environment have caused a significant decline in microbial diversity.
Founded in 2015, Moon Biotech focuses on nature-driven innovation, developing and utilizing the microorganisms most beneficial to crop growth. After screening in laboratories, greenhouses and fields, it combines advanced genome analysis methods and bioinformatics to introduce new microbial products and reconstruct the plant health microbiome.
Recently, 35Dou (WeChat ID: vcearth) interviewed Dr. Jiang Xianzhi, founder and CEO of Moon Biotech, and heard him talk about how Moon Biotech "rebuilds a green future with microorganisms."
Strength and timing are indispensable
As a doctorate from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiang Xianzhi has published many research papers and applied for more than ten international invention patents. During his PhD studies, he mainly studied how to use microorganisms to control nematodes. Plant parasitic nematodes can destroy plant root tissues or infect plant viruses when feeding on plants, causing huge economic losses to crops.
In 2010, Jiang Xianzhi joined Novozymes as a senior scientist, responsible for screening microorganisms and new enzymes, and won the Novozymes President Award in 2010 and 2012. Jiang Xianzhi has both a rich academic research background and complete industrialization experience due to his long-term engagement in the discovery, screening and application development of microbial resources.
Dr. Jiang Xianzhi, founder and CEO of Moon Biotech
Image source: Moon Biotech
Talking about the opportunity to found Moon Biotech, Jiang Xianzhi said that this is his interest. From undergraduate, master's and doctoral studies to starting a business, he has been dealing with microorganisms for nearly 20 years, and has always wanted to develop in the direction of practical applications and industrialization.
Since 2010, the microbiology industry has developed very rapidly, and its applications in many fields have also continued to expand. In recent years, the advancement of multi-omics technology and the accumulation of research have promoted the arrival of industrialization nodes, and microorganisms have become a hot topic in the field of biotechnology.
Abroad, the microbial industry is in a stage of rapid development, while at home, traditional microbial companies are basically sales and market-oriented and lack innovation capabilities and talents who have mastered the core technologies of industrialization. Therefore, Moon Biotech uses the industrialization background and technical advantages of the early entrepreneurial team to develop the domestic microbial market.
At the beginning of its establishment, Moon Biotech's core team focused on the discovery and application of microbial resources, including strain collection, isolation and culture, efficient screening, fermentation optimization, and dosage form development.
In terms of biological agriculture, the core members are composed of young scientists from world-renowned universities, multinational biotechnology companies, and leading domestic scientific research institutes. The team has rich experience in product development and industrialization operations.
35Dou learned that as of July 2019, Moon Biotech has more than 80,000 microbial strains, including many new strain resources discovered for the first time in the world. This number is expected to reach 100,000 by December 2019.
Currently, Moon Biotech is one of the largest and most biologically diverse commercial microbial resource centers in the world.
Regarding how to discover so many resources, Jiang Xianzhi said that this was due to the technology accumulation of the entire team and is also one of Moon Biotech's core competitiveness. The company requires every R&D personnel to participate in resource discovery. The team has collected more than 20,000 crop-related samples from 25 provinces and cities in China, including seed samples, crop samples, rhizosphere soil samples, etc., and Moon Biotech's bacterial culture technology is also relatively leading in the world.
How to break the commercialization of microbial resources?
Moon Biotech is positioned as an innovative biotechnology company that commercializes microbial resources. "The core of the entire microbial industry lies in how to discover microbial resources and achieve industrialization. In China, especially in the agricultural field, there are very few companies doing bacterial strain research and development in the early stages. They usually introduce or purchase strains through research institutes and schools. But the problem is that usually, these strains have not been rigorously screened and evaluated." Jiang Xianzhi explained to 35 Dou reporters.
Moon Biotech starts from the pain point of this industry and focuses on bacterial strain research and development and industrialization. Relying on the Culture-To-Product R&D platform, we use internationally leading (aerobic and anaerobic) microbial separation and culture technology to discover, preserve, and identify microbial resources with great development value.
The Culture-To-Product platform has technical advantages from microbial resource mining, to activity screening, application testing, formulation development, and industrial production, and can provide customers with professional microbial products and solutions.
The characteristic of Moon Biotech's R&D platform is that it is a purely industrial platform with five major links: resource mining, bacterial culture, high-throughput screening, fermentation optimization, and dosage form development, which together form a complete technical system.
Moon Biotech focused on bacterial strain discovery in the early days, but now the technology platform has been extended downstream to seek more applications. Building a complete R&D platform from strains to products is also one of Moon Biotech’s strengths.
Fermentation platform
Image source: Moon Biotech
Based on the Culture-To-Product R&D platform, Moon Biotech's main business is divided into two major sectors: biomedicine and bioagriculture. For the agricultural field, Moon Biotech has set phased goals, and its current development direction and product lines are centered around seed treatment.
Jiang Xianzhi further said, "Seed treatment is only one of the application methods. Other applications include efficient microbial fertilizers, pesticides, etc. The existing microbial fertilizers or microbial pesticide products are relatively similar. Moon Biotech's core value is to develop innovative products and benchmark foreign first-line biotechnology companies, using the most advanced technology and concepts to create first-class products. For example, phosphate-solubilizing microorganisms, that is, how to use microorganisms to improve crops' absorption of soil phosphorus. Moon Biotech has completed the screening and evaluation of tens of thousands of phosphorus-solubilizing microorganisms."
Currently, Moon Biotech has 12 registered agricultural microbial products, of which 4 microbial fertilizer products have obtained product certificates. By the end of 2019, 8 products are expected to be on the market.
In addition, the series of fungal products launched by Moon Biotech have taken a leading position in the country. The direction of product development is how to prevent and control bacterial diseases or fungal diseases of crops, as well as other soil-borne diseases.
Another key direction is how to use microorganisms to improve the stress resistance of crops, such as drought resistance, so that crops can maintain high yields and good survivability in drought environments.
Stimulate new market vitality in agriculture
In terms of business model, Moon Biotech focuses on To B business, and its core value lies in R&D, production and product licensing. In the field of seed treatment, Moon Biotech mainly focuses on field crops, such as rice, wheat, soybeans, etc., and promotes microbial products through the channels of seed companies.
Field test base
Image source: Moon Biotech
In the field of biofertilizers and biopesticides, Moon Biotech focuses on high value-added economic crops, including high-end vegetables and fruits, facility crops, Chinese medicinal materials, etc. In this aspect, it mainly cooperates with large domestic pesticide and fertilizer companies.
Greenhouse pot experiment
Image source: Moon Biotech
Regarding the development of microbial agriculture, Jiang Xianzhi said that it can be viewed from two dimensions. The first is the stock market. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, phosphate-solubilizing bacteria, Bt, etc. are all traditional applications.
Moon Biotech uses its technological advantages to improve its competitiveness by discovering more efficient strains, optimizing fermentation yields, developing more stable dosage forms, and improving the compatibility of microbial products. It also uses microorganisms in seed treatment, soil improvement and other subdivisions to rapidly expand the market capacity of the existing market.
On the other hand, Moon Biotech is more optimistic about the future incremental market, believing that it has broad room for development and that the market size may be dozens of times that of traditional microbial agriculture.
"Take human intestinal microorganisms as an example. The intestinal microorganisms we developed and utilized in the past were only limited to a small number of lactobacilli with a single function. In recent years, scientists have discovered that intestinal microorganisms are closely related to many important diseases and can exert great potential in the treatment of these diseases."
"Our understanding of the functions of agricultural microorganisms will also make great progress. For example, the foreign company Indigo uses microorganisms to improve the drought resistance of crops. Such products also belong to the incremental market. The previous products and functions were very single. With the advancement of technology, the ability to discover new species, new strains and new product research and development has been greatly improved, and microbiologists have the ability to design more innovative products." Jiang Xianzhi explained.
In addition to the team’s senior industrialization background and leading technology, Jiang Xianzhi believes that another major advantage of Moon Biotech lies in its deep understanding of the industry. Understanding the pulse of the industry, predicting future trends, and in-depth understanding of technology are the core competitiveness of Moon Biotech.
Since its establishment in 2015, Moon Biotech has taken root in the microbial industry and has connected with many high-quality resources. The first is academic resources. Moon Biotech has established close cooperative relationships with academic units such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and major universities. Secondly, it has connected with high-quality industrial companies, including large domestic and foreign pesticide and fertilizer companies.
35Dou learned that Moon Biotech had previously completed two rounds of financing. A new round of financing will be completed before the end of the year, with a transaction amount of RMB 100 million to RMB 150 million.
Data source: Moon Biotech, compiled from 35 buckets
Talking about future development plans, Jiang Xianzhi said, "Moon Biotech is currently focusing on the planting industry, using the microbiome of crops to solve outstanding problems faced by agriculture, such as finding ways to reduce or replace chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers, making crops more organic, environmentally friendly, and green. We also hope to cooperate with larger domestic seed companies to jointly develop and promote the application of microbial seed treatment. In the farming industry, Moon Biotech has also started preliminary work with its partners. For example, the product research and development cooperation plan with Nanjing GenScript is expected to be implemented soon this year.”
In the future, Moon Biotech will continue to use biological innovation to help solve environmental, agricultural, disease treatment and other issues, and provide customers with world-leading microbial products and services.
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