On October 25th, 2017, Crop Enhancement CEO Kevin Chen introduced CropCoat® to attendees at the annual partnership meeting of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) in Washington, D.C., receiving public recognition from a top chocolate manufacturer.
Each year, this event brings leaders from industry, government, nonprofits and academia together to share new developments in the global cocoa industry. The 2017 conference theme, Accelerating Sustainability through Technology and Innovation, focused on innovation and highlighted several new technologies which aim to improve sustainability outcomes for cocoa farmers around the world. Crop Enhancement was invited to join a limited number of companies in the WCF’s inaugural Innovation Marketplace.
Kevin hosted a poster at the Innovation Marketplace and spoke about Crop Enhancement’s CropCoat® product which is applied onto cocoa pods and forms a non-toxic protective layer that shields pods from pest and disease damage. We were very pleased with the high level of interest and engagement at our booth from chocolate companies, cocoa growers, cocoa processors, certification bodies, and governmental groups. We shared with them about our ongoing field trials that are showing that CropCoat can significantly reduce yield losses caused by one of the cocoa industry’s most destructive pests, the cocoa pod borer, using sustainable chemistry. We also described ongoing evaluations on the use of CropCoat in treatment regimens to control fungal diseases including black pod. The many discussions we had at the meeting and the excellent networking were just the beginning of dialogues that continue.
We thank the WCF for this opportunity to contribute to this year’s program and look forward to connecting again in October 2018 in São Paolo, Brazil.
Crop Enhancement Presents at Entomological Society of America (ESA) Conference
On November 8th, 2017, Crop Enhancement Global Field Development Manager Eric Flora introduced our CropCoat® product to attendees at Entomology 2017, the annual conference of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), in Denver, Colorado.
Eric began with an overview of CropCoat and explained how it can be used to disrupt pest behavior without the use of conventional toxic pesticides. CropCoat is a sprayable film made from naturally-occurring materials that are exempt from EPA tolerances. The film protects crop tissues and reduces insect feeding success on treated plant surfaces.
Eric then shared successful results from bioassays on the cocoa pod borer and the coffee berry borer, pests which respectively affect thousands of cocoa and coffee farmers around the world. He also presented field data showing CropCoat’s effect on other insect types including spider mites and other lepidoptera.
For a copy of the presentation abstract, please click here.
We thank the ESA for the opportunity to present to association members and look forward to sharing updates at the 2018 conference in Vancouver, Canada.