Vestaron, a leader in peptide-based biological crop protection, has announced the addition of $10M from investors including Grosvenor Food & AgTech to its Series C fundraising, bringing the total raised to $92M.

Headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Vestaron will use the funding to accelerate the development of its product pipeline as well as fuel its expansion from specialty fruit, vegetable and nut crops into broad acre row crops and into new insect pest categories.

“We partner with businesses that leverage innovative technology to improve the world’s production of food,” said Monty Bayer, Managing Partner, Grosvenor Food & AgTech. 

“Vestaron’s platform of effective peptide-based solutions are on a path to transform crop protection. The future of global food systems depends on the ability of growers to successfully grow and profitably sell their crops, and we’re excited to invest in Vestaron’s sustainable, people and pollinator-friendly pesticides that can vastly reduce the $70B in crop losses now faced by growers each year.”

Through our investment in Vestaron, we’re developing sustainable and natural crop protection solutions which are helping to protect yields, enabling producers to thrive, enhancing the safety of farmers as well as reducing the impact on the environment.

Founded in 2005, Vestaron develops next generation crop protection products from peptides – naturally occurring proteins – delivering selective effective biological control of pests for use on fruits, vegetables, nuts, and high-value field crops.

Crop protection is a vital part of global agricultural production and is responsible for approximately 40% of yields. Unlike traditional synthetic products, Vestaron’s do not affect bees or other beneficial insects and degrade into amino acids which are harmless to the environment, fish and mammals, helping to reduce pollution.

Vestaron's products’ industry leading safety enables farm workers and growers to be able to return to the field to tend to their plants or harvest crops more quickly than compared with traditional crop protection treatments. 

Through its proprietary discovery process and technology platform and leveraging a yeast-based fermentation manufacturing process, Vestaron is able to develop peptides which have the effectiveness of synthetics at a fraction of the cost and time to produce.

Vestaron’s products are in use across America, Mexico and Canada, available through a growing number of leading distributors, and the business began seeking EU regulatory approval earlier this year.