One promising approach to reducing the hazards of pesticides is to use genetically engineered organic compounds based on naturally occurring pesticides that are harmless to humans. The ATP project with AgriDyne Technologies offered a novel way to do this by taking advantage of large-scale biochemical production. AgriDyne, founded in Utah in the early 1980s as Native Plants, was a small company that would have been unable to pursue this research without the ATP award.

The technology AgriDyne developed during its ATP project is based on the chemistry of pyrethrins, a group of six closely related natural insecticides derived from pyrethrum, a type of chrysanthemum. Pyrethrins kill insects on contact, have low toxicity for mammals, degrade shortly after application and produce no harmful residues. The only current source for natural pyrethrins is chrysanthemum from east Africa. But, according to AgriDyne's proposal to ATP, supplies were neither stable nor sufficient to meet the worldwide demand.

Although pyrethrins can be synthesized in the laboratory, production via traditional chemical processes is difficult and expensive. AgriDyne's alternative was to genetically engineer yeast cells to produce chrysanthemyl alcohol, a precursor that is then chemically converted to chrysanthemic acid. This, in turn, can be used to produce commercial quantities of pyrethrin.

AgriDyne achieved most of the technical goals of the project, but production costs were higher than predicted. The company encountered financial problems that forced it to close in 1995, just as the project was ending. AgriDyne apparently did not have enough management resources to handle the challenges of both developing the technology and commercializing a product. The firm was acquired by Biosys of Columbia, Md., another biopesticides company, which decided not to make the investment required to commercialize the ATP-funded AgriDyne technology.

Biosys, in turn, declared bankruptcy in 1996. Its assets, including patents, were acquired by Thermo Trilogy, the second largest biopesticides company in the world. Thermo Trilogy officials reported having no current plans to commercialize the ATP-funded technology, since the cost today of procuring chrysanthemyl from Africa is lower than the expected cost of producing pyrethrin with the new technology. In addition, they say, detailed knowledge of the scale-up process for the technology (requirements for physical plant investment, as well as information on the predictability of a viable, consistent production yield) was unknown to them and their counterparts at Biosys, and they found it difficult to assess AgriDyne's ATP project. Both companies considered further pursuit of the technology too risky for them.

Although no commercial product has yet resulted from the ATP-funded technology, new bioengineering knowledge has. Some of it has been disclosed through two patents. But AgriDyne's manufacturing know-how was apparently not passed on to the company's successors. Should events in Africa decrease the supply or increase the cost of natural pyrethrin, the AgriDyne approach may be resurrected by funding development of the needed manufacturing skills.