By IAN ROSS
Hot, dry summers are tough on trees.
When trees are stressed by years of drought and elevated temperatures, they are susceptible to attacks by damaging insects.
BioForest Technologies Inc., a Sault forest management company with an organic pesticide and tree injector, is preparing to bring its environmentally friendly pest control system to market in 2008.
The 10-employee firm is navigating the government regulatory processes to register their pesticide made from the neem tree and their patented EcoJect system for commercial use in the United States (U.S.) by early summer.
It has been a painstaking process for the former federal bug science researchers turned entrepreneurs.
"There's a lot of bureaucratic paperwork that has to be taken care of," says Joe Meating, the company's director of forest surveys and protection.
Meating expects they will bring their product to market in the key states of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana by June and July when the company is set to begin treating trees.
Their pesticide formulation and hand-held injection system has been a valuable tool in the fight against the emerald ash borer beetle.
In North America, the bug has killed an estimated 20-million trees in the U.S. Midwest and scientists fear the insect has the potential to become another Dutch elm disease essentially wiping out ash trees.
The pesticide is injected directly into the tree. The neem formulation kills the hatched larvae as it begins to feed.
Neem has been recognized in India for centuries for its medicinal purposes and environmental benefits.
The company has conducted field trials at sites in Windsor, London and throughout southwestern Ontario where ash infestations by the bark-eating bug has spread east from Michigan.
Aerial spraying to fight the emerald ash borer doesn't work. The only option has been cutting down trees to remove the host.
Meating says some early results in London have provided proof to city officials that the injections can work.
There's other promising field data from trials in the Windsor-Essex County area in 2003-2004 where the emerald ash borer was first detected in Ontario.
"We now have data from those trials showing that this product works very well, says Meating."
There was excitement last year in the company about a pending deal with Bayer Crop Sciences to marry Bayer's own pesticide formulation with BioForest's tree injector. However, that joint venture didn't materialize.
No matter, says Meating; his company is pressing on with government registration to produce the injector on their own.
This year the company started with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who will approve it for sale and in Canada through a pest management regulatory authority in Ottawa.
"We are completing the final toxicology tests on the product," says Meating.
The U.S. approvals should be fairly easy, he says, since the neem's active ingredient, Azadirachtin, is already registered there, is considered user-friendly and is not toxic to birds and mammals.
Potential clients would be licenced applicators such as tree care companies, arbourists and government agencies like the Michigan Department of Transportation for their highway rest areas where there are ash trees.
The neem formula, which they are calling TreeAzin, can kill other bugs as well.
Meating says they've conducted trials against more than a dozen damaging insects including the spruce budworm, gypsy moth, jack pine budworm, forest tent caterpillar, sawflies, and even the mountain pine beetle in Western Canada.
Those trials have presented "interesting" results, but not conclusive enough.
They hope to schedule a full trial next year with the Canadian Forest Service and the British Columbia and Alberta governments because of their pine beetle infestation.
"We're anxious to find out if it's a viable treatment option," Meating says
When their product goes commercial, they'll need a manufacturing site, but they have no idea how big the order book might grow.
"We cannot really market (it) until it's registered," he says.
Last year, Meating estimates they had interest from more than 500 potential clients even without advertising. Manitoba wants to use their injection system in their provincial Dutch elm disease program.
Since BioForest was established in 1996, much of their research and development work has been self-financed through forest management contracts with some government assistance. Now they've been approached by potential investors to get the EcoJect to the commercial stage.
Their latest prototype holds a maximum dosage canister of 30 millilitres of formula.
Meating says producing an off-the-shelf "Canadian Tire" injector represents another big regulatory leap, but they have a preliminary design for a pre-loaded consumer version.
"It's a brand new market in Canada. There are no other injectables, so we're breaking new ground here in offering a new approach to pest control."
