Felipe Gomez Garcia Garcia, CEO of Peregrin and Felix Garcia Moreno (CEO of Kimitec’s MAAVi Innovation Center), have signed a MAAVi Lab, or strategic collaboration agreement. This will allow both companies to work together to produce the best sustainable garlic before 2030. Supermarkets want us to reinvent how we produce, which requires natural products that increase efficiency and don’t lower the quality and productivity of the crops. MAAVi provides us with natural solutions that have the same characteristics of a chemical product, said Peregrin’s CEO during the signing.
Kimitec’s MAAVi Innovation, which is based in Kimitec, will explore personalized solutions that can be tailored to Peregrin’s agronomic requirements. These include mite and fungi control in harvest, fungi, insects in postharvest, water management, and improved seed treatments. Felix Garcia, CEO at Kimitec, says that the idea is to support Peregrin as it transitions to cultivating crops without residues over the next years.
The new European and global strategies and policies aiming to reduce chemical synthesis product use in crops have made it a priority to find natural solutions at a lower cost. This is important for thousands of companies who need to keep their crops productive and profitable.
This shift in the food system must be healthier, more sustainable, and in line with the goals of the European Green Deal’s Farm to Fork strategy. It must also include tools for producers and farmers so they can adapt to the new regulatory environment without putting their economic viability at risk.
Producers ask: Who looks after our problems? Who is there to support us as producers and provide solutions? Who thinks about us? The MAAVi Innovation Center created MAAVi Labs to help people of all sizes access its R&D center. This is thanks to the 15-years of experience Kimitec has in studying natural compounds and the potential to be the biggest biotechnology center in Europe. These strategic alliances are different from other research centers. They start with active listening and understanding the problem and end in the product.
Peregrin’s MAAVi Innovation Center at Kimitec and Peregrin will collaborate under a 360-open innovation model to transition from Zero Residue cultivation to Residue Free cultivation. This will replace the chemically synthesized chemicals currently used to control pests or diseases. The crop cycle is just as effective.
Gomez stated, “Together, we are going to change field technicians’ mindsets so that farmers realize that MAAVi solutions are not going anywhere without us.”
