Davis-based Botanical Solution Inc. has raised $6.1 million to expand its development of agricultural and pharmaceutical compounds derived from plants, and it's looking for a research and development lab space in Davis or along the Interstate 80 corridor.
The money will also allow the company to build out a research and development lab in Northern California and to hire about 10 researchers, CEO Gaston Salinas told the Business Journal.
Botanical Solution only needs a small space to do its research, as it grows plant material indoors in stacked racks in controlled conditions, he said. The company’s 20 employees work in about a 10,000-square-foot facility in Santiago, Chile, where Botanical Solution was founded in 2013.
This funding round was led by Palo Alto-based private equity firm Otter Capital LLC, and it included two existing investors, Inversiones el Coigue and Inversiones Eurocel, both based in Santiago. Botanical Solution previously raised $3.3 million just over a year ago.
Salinas said the company is eager to develop the second research and production facility to prove that it can produce advanced botanical materials anywhere. The new lab will work on pharmaceutical-grade compounds as well as the agricultural compounds it sells.
Botanical Solution uses plants as tiny biofactories to manufacture rare extracts for agriculture and pharmaceutical products. The company’s patented process allows it to control conditions and outcomes in infant plants so that rare and protected species don’t have to be harvested as adult plants in the wild.
The funding will help the company continue to produce and sell its anti-fungal product, which is used in Chile and Peru, and is being released in Mexico this year through a partnership with Switzerland-based crop protection company Syngenta. That product was named BotriStop because it's used against gray mold, or botrytis.
There is a competing product in the U.S. with a similar name, however, so the company will use the new name Quillibrium for global branding going forward, Salinas said. The new name is also a better match because the product is a full-spectrum fungicide, so it works on many more pathogens than just botrytis. The Quillibrium name comes from the source of the active ingredient, which is the soap bark tree native to Chile, which has the scientific name Quillaja saponaria.
Gray mold is a problem for grapes, hops, almonds, hemp and other high-value crops. The extract doesn’t kill the mold, but compounds in the extract inhibit enzymes that the fungus uses to colonize tissue. It also inhibits the ability of the fungus to propagate more spores.
Botanical Solution manipulates and stresses the plants with precise protocols that create conditions that don’t occur in the wild. As the plant tries to defend itself, it creates the kind of compounds that the company is seeking to encourage and isolate.
Botanical Solution grows plant tissue culture indoors in controlled environments on vertical racks. Its system is essentially a clean room that allows for no contamination. The process can keep cultivation going continuously, and it allows its material to be harvested after only 60 days.
