Insect Bioassays​
At Agro, we deliver reliable data for toxicity testing the efficacy of bio-pesticidal agents against many agricultural insect pests. These include but are not limited to Western corn rootworm, Fall armyworm, Corn earworm, Black cutworm, Corn borers, Diamondback moth, and Hessian fly.
Our team is capable of establishing biological control methods and bioassay for testing any insect of your interest. Insect bioassays include diet incorporation, diet surface contamination, dose-response curve assay, and droplet feeding. We also validate biopesticide efficiency on host plants, including leaf disc and whole plant assays.
Anti-Fungal / Bacterial testing
Our team uses broad testing methods for anti-microbial agents such as peptides, proteins, dsRNA-based biopesticides, and fungicides developed by AgTechs and startups. We aim to seek agroecological solutions to pest management problems.
We perform in-vitro protocols using different agar diffusion methods, broth dilution, and agar dilution to assist in measuring the inhibitory activities of anti-microbial agents. For rapid screening for microorganisms’ antagonism, we use the cross-streak method.
We can test against many pathogenic fungal and bacterial species. Our lab has the following fungal isolates that are available and ready to test.
Fusarium oxysporum, Fusarium sp. Rhizoctonia solani, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Colletotrichum coccodes, Botrytis cinerea, Alternaria alternata, Stemphylium eturmiunum, Phytophthora sojae, Pythium irregulare, and Phomopsis sojae.
Also, bacterial strains such as Xanthomonas and Pseudomonas.
Gene Expression qPCR
Molecular biology characterization of biomolecule-based pesticides. We provide a thorough analysis for the expression of the gene of interest with agro biotechnology. Our service includes extracting RNA from the target species, synthesizing cDNA, designing a specific primer, testing primer efficiency, running qPCR to measure the transcription levels, and providing data analysis reports.
Microscopy Staining
In-depth microscopic analytics methods for detecting and localizing active agents such as peptides, proteins, DNA, RNA, and dsRNA. We perform fine dissection of delicate insect tissues and apply fluorescence staining for confocal and fluorescent microscopy analysis.
Bioassay optimization
In our lab we investigated the inconsistency in data reported from testing the susceptibility of Corn earworms and Fall armyworm to bio-pesticidal molecule. Our trials to optimize the standard protocols led to bioassay improvement and data resulted from insect mortality and growth inhibition were more consistence.
If you are looking to improve data accuracy and drive your testing bioassays forward, we invite you to join us in our trials to optimize testing methods and protocols according to your needs.
Consultations
Our consulting services aid startups in decision-making regarding testing abilities, best practices in experimental design and data analysis in pest management solutions, agro bioresearch and agro biotechnology.
We provide thorough assessment reports to evaluate the operational and financial feasibility of in-house capability for conducting bioassays testing.