Developing new bio-derived fungicides targeting Zymoseptoria tritici

Modern farming relies on synthetic fungicides to support crop yields. Unfortunately, these chemicals are often associated with environmental and human health risks and are increasingly failing due to development of resistance. In the UK, wheat represents the primary arable grain crop, with an annual production of 15.5Mn tonnes and a market value of £1.2Bn. _Zymoseptoria tritici_, a fungal pathogen, causes the most destructive and economically damaging foliar disease affecting winter wheat in the UK, resulting in yield losses of **=**50%. To manage this disease, farmers resort to **=**12 fungicide applications, but this widespread use is causing pathogen resistance and environmental degradation. There is therefore an urgent need for new, safe, and green fungicides and microbial chemistry offers a powerful alternative. Microbes that compete with pathogens in nature provide a source of highly effective fungicidal compounds, but historically only 1% of these microbes have been explored. This is because only this small percentage can survive the transition from natural symbiotic communities to isolation in laboratory conditions. At Bactobio, we use breakthroughs in next-generation sequencing, machine learning, and bioengineering to understand microbial community compositions and chemical/physical conditions needed to make each microbial community viable. We mimic these communities and conditions, resulting in novel cultured microbial species, which we screen for novel, green, and safe fungicides. We have developed a platform that provides access to the remaining 99% of previously unexplored microbes. The extensive database we are generating supports machine learning approaches to further optimise our experimentation, ensuring that we harness the full potential of uncultured microbes. In this project, our goal is to leverage our exclusive access to previously uncultured microbes to discover new bio-derived fungicides against _Z. tritici_. We aim to enhance our microbial library and build a sophisticated compound identification platform, enabling the development of a high-throughput fungicide discovery engine. We intend to boost our genomics and compound profiling technologies to consistently discover, test, and scale up the production of new compounds for further development. Our objective is to discover and develop fungicidal compounds targeting _Z. tritici._ By project end, we aim to have 3-5 fungicides targeting _Z. tritici_ with complete data packages up to small plot field trials. Subsequently, we will license them to large agritech players. Together, we aim to safeguard future food security, reduce the environmental impact of disease management, slow the spread of disease resistance, and protect the economic viability of wheat farming in the UK.