LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Eden Research announced on Thursday that its commercial collaborator, Eastman Chemical Company, has received authorisation for the sale of 'Cedroz' in France.
The AIM-traded firm said the French regulator also approved its biofungicide, 'Mevalone', for use in organic agriculture in France.

Separately, Eden had also been notified that 'Mevalone' received authorisation for use on table and wine grapes in Serbia, via regional distributor K&N Efthymiadis (KNE).

The board said the approval of Cedroz in France covered both indoor and outdoor uses on strawberries, tomatoes, aubergines, physalis, pepinos, cucumbers, courgettes, gherkins and other edible peel cucurbits), all varieties of peppers, chillies, melons, watermelons, and pumpkins, and other non-edible peel cucurbits.

Cedroz was described by the company as a bionematicide based on terpene active ingredients encapsulated in Eden's patented 'Sustaine' technology.

Both of the firm's commercially available products had now been authorised in France, following the approval for the use of Mevalone on grapes in 2017.

The board noted that the combined fruit, vegetable and horticultural sector in France had an annual output of more than €8bn, excluding potatoes and wine grapes, with melons the second most plentiful fruit in the country, with 250,000 tonnes grown each year.

It explained that the demand for Cedroz stemmed from it being residue-free with a zero-day pre-harvest interval, which allows for applications right up to harvest.

Those characteristics, combined with regulatory changes that had limited the availability of traditional nematicides, positioned Cedroz well for inclusion in French growers' crop protection programmes, Eden claimed.

The organic approval of Mevalone, meanwhile, was described as "timely", as the French organic farming industry was growing, increasing from around 580,000 hectares in 2008 to over two million hectares in 2018.

Now that Mevalone could be used on organic farms, it increased the addressable market for the product.

Eden said its three EU-registered active ingredients, geraniol, eugenol and thymol, received approval for use in organic farming in the EU in January.

The board said there was an opportunity for additional growth in other EU countries, when organic approval for Cedroz and Mevalone as full formulations is granted.

The EU had recently proposed that at least 25% of the EU's agricultural land should be farmed organically, with the action plan supporting this change now at public consultation phase.

Finally, Eden said the authorisation for the sale of Mevalone in Serbia via KNE was important as the country had a growing winemaking industry, with the export value of wine and grape based spirits doubling to €17m between 2006 and 2017.

Serbia was the 13th country to authorise Mevalone, which already included the top three wine producing countries in the world, being Italy, France and Spain.

"We are pleased to see Cedroz reach another key European market," said chief executive officer Sean Smith.

"In France, our biofungicide, Mevalone, has been used by French grape growers to integrate more sustainable practices into their crop protection programmes and Cedroz will play a similar role for a wider range of fruit and vegetable growers in the market."

Smith said Cedroz had "strong momentum", with the approval being its fourth full authorisation in 2020.

"We look forward to continuing to work with our commercial collaborators as they make progress with marketing and selling our products to drive our ambitions to be a leader in sustainable and organic crop protection."

At 0934 BST, shares in Eden Research were up 4.2% at 7.45p.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE