Micropep Technologies announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified MPD-01, Micropep’s peptide-based biofungicide, as a “biochemical-like” active ingredient.

Micropep can now engage with the EPA to confirm data and labeling requirements to obtain a registration for MPD-01 to bring this product to market.

MPD-01 is a variant of a naturally occurring micropeptide discovered in tomato plants and represents a significant advancement in agricultural science. Unlike conventional pesticides, biochemicals like MPD-01 are derived from natural sources and present a non-toxic mode of action to control target pests.

The company has developed a proprietary AI-powered discovery platform for micropeptides, which are short protein molecules naturally produced by plant cells and have an infinite number of applications.

“We’ve implemented and used a generative artificial intelligence (AI) pipeline to create a library of thousands of antifungal peptides compatible with proprietary manufacturing rules. The prediction model has been built from public and Micropep-owned experimental data to predict the antimicrobial activity of a peptide,” said Mikael Courbot, CTO of Micropep. “Micropep’s pipeline generated thousands of peptides from a seed sequence and selected those with the highest probability to be active, stable and producible.”

Micropep has conducted successful field trials of MPD-01 in various global locations, including California, North Carolina, Paraguay and France. The company says these trials have demonstrated the biofungicide’s efficacy in managing diseases and boosting crop production, particularly in potatoes, soybeans and grapes.

MPD-01 is not a single-shot solution from Micropep, which has operations in the U.S. and France. The organization is working on additional leads with two peptides, MP594 and MP478, already in the field, showing promising results and excellent efficacy.