Nextgen Biopesticides, a company which uses selective breeding approaches to develop effective and safe biopesticides for the control of crop pest insects, has won the Agri-Food Invention of the Year Award.
The company was presented with the award at the recent Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP), INVENT 2015 Awards.
Coming top in the Agri-Food category, which was sponsored by Fujitsu, Nextgen Biopesticides not only secured a share of the £33,000 prize fund, but will also now travel to California on Northern Ireland’s Tech Mission to pitch to prospective investors and partners.
Speaking about the competition and the importance of innovators like Nextgen Biopesticides, Greg McDaid, Client Managing Director Fujitsu, said that the company is delighted that Nextgen Biopesticides has won the INVENT Agri-Food Award for their industry leading developments in pest control.
“They have demonstrated how problem-solving, research and clever application can result in innovations that can be used to tackle a global problem – in this case ineffective biopesticides.
“The Agri-Food sector in Northern Ireland is growing, with more inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs and students addressing some of the megatrends facing the world including global population growth and climate ready crops.
“At Fujitsu, we are continuingly challenging ourselves to see how best ICT can be utilised and we have delivered a number of exciting projects in the Agri-Food sector including ‘Akisai’ an agriculture and food cloud service which is a one stop ICT solution for agri-businesses.
“We look forward to seeing other innovations such as that showcased by NextGen Biopesticides emerge from Northern Ireland in the future,” he said.
Steve Orr, Director, NISP, Greg McDaid from Fujitsu with Norman Apsley, Chief Executive Officer at NISP and Dick Milliken, Chairman, NISP
Dr Jonathan Dalzell from Queen’s University who heads up NextGen Biopesticides said that he was delighted to win the Agri-Food category of Invent 2015 with our NextGen BioPesticides venture.
“This represents a strong foundation from which we can commercialise our enhanced nematode bioinsecticides. In particular, the opportunity to join the Northern Ireland tech mission to San Diego will help us create important international links.
“As a lecturer within the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, my research focus is to address the biggest challenges we face locally, as well as globally,” he said.
