Biobest opens new production facility for biological controllers of aphids

On 24th April, Biobest announced the opening of a new €1.2 million state-of-the-art production facility at Biobest Maroc. The brand new facility covers an area of ​​2000 m2 and is equipped with climate cells. These climate cells are comparable to the concept of ‘vertical farming’. This is part of Biobest’s ongoing strategy to enlarge and improve its worldwide production capacity of organic pesticides against aphids.

The gall midge Aphidoletes aphidimyza is a voracious predator of aphids and plays a crucial role in their successful control.

“When aphids begin to develop, the grower must act quickly to keep the plague under control,” said Karel Bolckmans, COO of Biobest. “This investment doubles our Aphidoletes production capacity, and represents a crucial contribution to the worldwide fight against aphids in horticultural crops With our multiple production facilities all over the world, our goal is to reach growers anywhere in the world quickly and our team in Morocco has done an excellent job with the timely and successful building of this new production facility.”

“Growers cannot successfully control aphids with just a single product. That is why we recommend strategies that use an effective combination of different applications,” said Marc Mertens, sales manager at Biobest.

For instance, the gall midge Aphidoletes can work in a powerful tandem with different types of parasitic wasps.