The Toothpick Project
Research - Bozeman, Montana, United States
The Toothpick Project Employees
The Toothpick Project Details
The Problem: Striga, a parasitic weed that is rampant in 18 countries, is a major challenge to sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Growing upon the roots of maize, sorghum, millet, and dryland rice, it reduces the yield of cereal crops by as much as 20-100%, leading to dire consequences for the smallholder farmer.An estimated 40 million farmers have Striga, impacting 100-300 million people across Africa. 85% of maize farmers are women.Striga is associated with malnutrition and starvation, family abandonment and land abandonment. Our Solution:FoxyT14 technology delivers virulence-enhanced strains of endemic, host-specific fungi in a manner (on a toothpick!) that provides smallholder farmers with production and control of their own fresh active field inoculum at planting time. It can be delivered at very low cost, greatly reducing the amount of labor needed for weeding, and it dramatically increases (40-55%) the overall crop yield. Innovations in Striga control include herbicide-resistant seed, Striga-resistant seed, crop rotation, conventional biocontrol, push:pull, and weeding. None of these strategies have been sufficiently safe, effective, affordable, and accessible for devastated farmers.Expansion: The Toothpick Project is transitioning from nonprofit to a hybrid social impact business. We are scaling up manufacturing in Kenya, reducing our product cost by more than half. We are currently expanding our distribution partners (NGOs, CBOs) who sell/provide agriculture inputs (seeds, fertilizer, tools, training) to rural farmers. Expansion to other African Striga-infested countries will begin with a 2018 ‘virulence enhancement' training for plant pathologists, providing them with the tools necessary to initiate permitting and registration, insure biological longevity, and build a biocontrol network.The overall project is managed and coordinated by a team from the US, Kenya, and Germany.
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