Firm’s Fungus Does the Dirty Work : Agriculture: Pesticide Mycotrol does not harm crops, beneficial insects, animals or people. But its developer has no means to mass-produce it.

BUTTE, Mont. —  A Montana company has harnessed a common fungus to consume some of the world’s most devastating crop pests--then disappear without so much as a burp.

*

Now Mycotech Corp. of Butte is preparing to bid for a share of the $7-billion global market for agricultural chemicals. One problem: While its product is the darling of the moment, Mycotech has no ability to mass-produce it.

Mycotech’s pet fungus, known by its trade name, Mycotrol, was certified this spring by the Environmental Protection Agency for use against a host of pests, including grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, locusts, aphids and thrips.

But its prime target is the whitefly, which feasts on crops ranging from cotton to the succulent melons and vegetables of California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. In California’s Imperial Valley alone, losses average $320 million a year.

Mycotrol destroys the pest but does not harm crops, beneficial insects, animals, people or the environment. And when its job is done, it disappears.

“Our big problem was keeping it alive long enough to kill insects,” said company President Robert Kearns.

With Mycotrol, said U.S. Agriculture Department researcher Raymond Carruthers, growers could use a chemical pesticide once to knock down initial infestations; then they could spray the fungus about once a week.

The fungus releases natural chemicals that bore holes through the pest’s skin. Enzymes from the invading fungus dissolve the pest’s fat reserves--killing it within days.

Four years of tests in the United States, Canada and Africa found that Mycotrol killed more than 80% of the target insects. U.S. Agriculture Department researchers say it could help growers of melons, cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

The cost should be about the same as for chemical pesticides, $10 to $12 per acre, Kearns said. And while pests can become immune to chemicals, that cannot happen with Mycotrol.

The EPA approved Mycotrol for commercial use in March, the first fungal pesticide it has approved for agricultural use. The only other fungal product the EPA has ever approved was aimed at cockroaches.

Word of the EPA approval swept through the agricultural community, and queries rolled in. Mycotech’s laboratory door is papered with articles from dozens of agricultural publications and organizations, ranging from the Society for Invertebrate Pathology to the Farm Times, California Farmer and World Crop Protection News.

But Mycotech has nothing to sell. Its 22 employees in rented parts of three Butte buildings can produce only 3,000 pounds of Mycotrol a month, barely enough to meet research commitments.

The company is trying to raise $3.8 million to build a plant to produce 21,000 pounds a month in time for next fall’s fruit harvest in the Southwest and Mexico.

Mycotrol was developed from one of the 200,000 strains of a fungus known as Beauvaria bessiana, which is found all over the world and has long been known as a killer of insect pests.

The Chinese, who used it 200 years ago, used to fill pits beside crop fields with fungus-killed insects, then blow up the piles to scatter spores over the crops. In more modern times, the Chinese loaded spore material into mortar shells and exploded them overhead.

Mycotech’s delivery system is more effective. Mycotrol is simply sprayed on crops with conventional equipment, and it can be mixed with chemical pesticides.