The biological boom in Brazil does not show signs of abating anytime soon, with major ag suppliers and innovative start-ups building their go-to-market strategy around and in the agricultural powerhouse, as a panel of industry experts shared during the 2026 World Agri-Tech event in São Paulo.
On June 23, SP Ventures Managing Partner, Francisco Jardim, led a discussion about the unique opportunities and challenges for biologicals in Brazil in a panel discussion, consisting of representatives from Corteva, Micropep, and Invaio Sciences.
Agricultural supplier Corteva invests heavily in biologicals in LatAm, Brooks Coetzee, biologicals business partner for the company, said during the panel. The ag supplier’s venture arm, Corteva Catalyst, has invested in a number of biological companies, including Argentinian Puna Bio and Brazilian Symbiomics.
“Brazil is a gateway to the world in terms of biologicals. It’s a very dynamic production system, multi-cropping. ... There’s resistance building up here over and over. And for a company like ours, this is where we want to be. This is where we want to play. This is where we want to prove ourselves,” Coetzee elaborated.
Brazil’s dynamic agricultural environment cuts both ways — providing an ideal environment to conduct field trials and test new products but also increasing the number of factors that go into that product, Coetzee explained.
“For one of our flagship products in Brazil, we [did] more than 1,300 trials over a two-year period before we positioned the product Utrisha, and it gives the farmer ... almost 200% ROI in soy [and] 100% in corn. And that you get by staying in a market, investing in that market, and making sure you understand the market,” he added.
Brazil becomes a home for ag peptides
Microbial-based biologicals have gained a foothold in Brazil, and new classes of products — like peptide-based solutions — are finding a home in Brazil. Peptides are short chains of amino acids, which can be used as fungicides or pesticides or used to promote plant health.
Invaio works with a class of anti-fungal peptides called defensins, which are biodegradable, meaning that they do not leave a residue behind like synthetics, Amy O’Shea, director and CEO of the company, explained during the panel.
Earlier this year, Invaio entered a strategic partnership with Brazilian research organization Fundecitrus (Fund for Citrus Protection) to develop peptide-based products to address citrus greening, a bacterial disease that kills trees and produces bitter fruit.
These peptides do not have the same handling and stability issues as microbial-based biologicals, O’Shea explained. However, peptides are not designed to replace biologicals, instead they are just one tool to address specific problems, she added.
“Growers need tools. They need a variety of tools. They need different modes of action, especially when we’re talking about the fungicidal area, so having multiple modes of action to help prevent the onset of resistance is critical and key. So, we look at these as an additional tool in the toolbox,” she elaborated.
She added, “That being said, peptides in and of themselves will offer a different kind of consistency, usability, and adoptability drop in to existing agronomic practices that sometimes is difficult with microbial-based biologicals.”
The French-American start-up Micropep Technologies is another company developing peptides for agricultural use, having recently submitted its dossier for regulatory approval in Brazil and Paraguay, after setting up an office in the U.S. in 2022.
This year, Micropep hired its first Brazilian employee to tap into the market opportunity in LatAm and amid sluggish adoption of bio-based ag products in the U.S., Mikael Courbot, CTO for the company, shared on the panel.
“We really thought — and it changed slightly over time — that [the] U.S. would be an early adopter of new technologies, essentially bio-controls and bio-stimulants, which hasn’t proven to be as strong as we would have hoped,” Courbot admitted.
