Suterra, the biological pest control division of The Wonderful Company, has acquired the assets of peptide-based bioinsecticide pioneer Vestaron.
The deal includes Vestaron’s Spear and Basin product lines, both recently approved by EPA. The agreement also spans Vestaron’s research facility in Kalamazoo, Mich., along with its pipeline of active ingredients and product formulations.
How Market Shifts Are Normalizing Biological Tools for Growers
The transaction aligns with a broader shift toward biological tools as growers navigate tightening export maximum residue limits and mounting sustainability mandates, says Stephanie Senner, Suterra’s senior director of marketing.
“A lot of growers and a lot of the industry look at biologicals as a solution for insecticide resistance, but it actually resolves a lot of concerns and constraints for growers,” she says.
Growth in market awareness has kept pace with that operational need, says Alessandra Moccia, Suterra’s senior director of global regulatory affairs.
“Over the last year, there has been wider awareness about biologicals and the need that growers have to have biologicals,” she says.
Senner points to accelerating corporate investments across the crop protection sector as proof of the category’s viability.
“It is just another signal that if there’s a technology with proven efficacy and proven ability to scale, you’re going to see continued industry investment,” she says.
Scaling Advanced Molecules Through Vertically Integrated Networks
As an early commercial pioneer in agricultural mating disruption, Suterra scaled pheromone systems, including its automated aerosol delivery platforms, to suppress pests such as California red scale and vine mealybugs.
Senner notes that Suterra’s vertically integrated structure accelerates the commercialization of scientifically advanced molecules.
“We are fortunate to have spent 40 years mastering this with a biocontrol like pheromones,” she says. “Now we can apply that expertise as new scientific developments emerge, like peptides.”
Vestaron’s platform maps the DNA sequence of spider venom to target caterpillars, loopers and navel orangeworms. Because target pests have no built-in resistance to these specific peptides, the novel biopesticides offer immediate knockdown capabilities that mirror traditional chemistry.
“We saw these as highly complementary tools within a single system,” Senner says. “Pheromones are really effective at preventing pest infestations by controlling populations before they build. Spear LEP provides this targeted intervention with a novel mode of action when pest pressure is present.”
The integration allows the company to build comprehensive, season-long integrated pest management programs that bridge early-season prevention with late-season control.
Managing Pest Resistance With a Full Menu of Options
The multi-tiered biological approach arrives as conventional synthetic chemical toolkits face mounting regulatory scrutiny, shifting efficacy and supply chain volatility.
“We’ve got to have a real spectrum available to people, but as those chemical toolkits come offline — either because of regulation, because of resistance, because of cost or even availability with supply chain and tariff issues — having a flexibility of a full menu of options is important,” Senner says.
As an example, growers could use Suterra’s CheckMate DBM-F to control diamondback moth through mating disruption and then Vestaron’s Spear LEP in a spray rotation with other insecticides.
While historical skepticism regarding the cost and consistency of biologicals lingers, Moccia says those myths are dissipating as legacy crop protection companies realize biologicals protect their core business.
“For conventional pesticides, having a product that will help enlarge the life cycle of your pesticides means you’re not generating resistance,” she says. “Conventional companies are starting to understand that. They’re really seeing the necessity to use other technologies with different for a different mode of actions, so that the other things in their portfolio can live longer.”
Global Regulatory Frameworks Modernize to Accelerate Approvals
As agricultural demand intensifies, global regulatory frameworks are modernizing to accelerate biological approvals.
“Biocontrol is really that extra tool in your toolbox that allow also to really protect the soil, the biodiversity overall, the health of your field,” Moccia says. “As growers realize that, and the demand increases, regulations all over the world follow that trend.”
For Suterra, anchoring Vestaron’s peptide assets onto its existing global footprint provides an immediate runway into international markets, including established registrations in Europe and Africa. The expansion will leverage Suterra’s manufacturing hub in Bend, Ore., which operates as the world’s largest dedicated pheromone synthesis facility.
“We’ve had 40 years to get very good at fine chemical manufacturing and other ways to scale,” Senner says. “We have an incredible facility; it’s the world’s largest dedicated pheromone facility that we’ve built up over time.”
Historically, it’s been easier for companies to register biological products in the U.S. than in other countries, Moccia says, noting this is changing.
“Brazil just invested a lot at the policy level for biocontrol,” she says. “They started making changes to the current regulation to allow a faster entry into the market of biologicals, because that was what the farmers were asking for.”
Similar regulatory overhauls are underway globally, Moccia says, noting that Chile is developing a framework tailored to botanicals, microorganisms and semiochemicals while the European Union continues to evaluate a streamlined biological approval pathway.
The Biotechnology Boom and the Future of Pest Management
“We also are now in an area of understanding that really we should try to mimic nature more, that whatever we put in there, it comes back like a boomerang,” Moccia says. “That’s why all the innovation is really looking at taking what is already there in nature and try to improve it, but in a way with a different paradigm.”
As for the future of the biological category, Senner says there’s been a huge push toward biologicals as replacements for conventional chemistries. She says there’s also great interest in broadacre commodities, such as corn and cotton, for Vestaron’s products to manage lepidopteran pests.
“The way that it’s applied is very familiar to growers,” she says. “It is a liquid insecticide. They know how it goes on, they know how to mix it with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), they know how to mix it with an adjuvant, and so I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to look at commodity crops and commodity crop partnerships.”
Senner says diversifying into peptides allows Suterra to continue to educate the industry about biologicals and reframe how the industry defines natural crop protection.
“Some people perceive mating disruption as its own mode of action or as a special cultural activity that a grower might undertake versus part of the biological playing field,” she says. “So, it’s helpful for us to have a whole bunch of modes of action because we also have attract and kill products. We have a lot of different opportunities to not just be considered like pheromones only but to have a more complete biological portfolio.”
Shorter regulatory timelines for biological products relative to conventional synthetic crop protection products also help accelerate this market evolution, Senner says. She also points to Western Growers’ and Wharf42’s Platform 10, which is a multiyear initiative that fast-tracks the development, testing and adoption of biologics that will help bring the category into the future.
“What Suterra is excellent at is scaling commercially viable products,” she says. “So, once something comes out of that ecosystem and is demonstrably a great product, companies like Suterra that are very good at scaling and are vertically integrated might be a good home for those products.”
This collaborative commercial pipeline is expected to fuel exponential market growth. Senner says Pam Marrone, arguably the godmother of the biological and biocontrol industry, recently said she expects that biologicals — biostimulants, biofertilizers and biopesticides — would equal the market size of traditional pesticides by 2040.
“We are in the biotechnology boom, where we really are understanding more about how we work, nature works, and we can use it to the benefit of agriculture,” Moccia says.
Moccia expects within the next 10 years, biocontrols will be fully integrated into a crop protection rotation.
“It’s really a future where we’re not even talking anymore about biotechnology or biocontrol as something different, because it will become the standard integrated in the pest management strategies of the growers,” she says.
