Our Performance by Design™ platform breaks new ground

Invaio is changing how crop protection is created—designing novel biological active ingredients with the performance, safety and practical requirements of growers in mind from the start.

For decades, discovering a new active ingredient to control plant pests and diseases took years and was like finding a needle in a haystack. Instead of looking for the needle, we can design it—in just weeks.

Proteins, particularly peptides, are the key to a new generation of nature-informed crop protection products. Through our Performance by Design™ platform, we generate programmable peptides at scale, designing specific attributes and novel modes of action to address plant pests and diseases. Our goal goes beyond discovering an effective active ingredient: we design for reliable field performance, safety, manufacturability and ease of use.

10 times more efficient

“Invaio’s design platform is 10 times more efficient than traditional chemical discovery methods at identifying a novel crop health solution,” says Magalie Guilhabert. “We can design for new modes of action that are targeted to a specific pest or disease and build in key characteristics that tailor the peptide for safety, on-farm use and even production.”

“Our research and development team screens billions of peptides in silico, which is faster, costs less and has a higher success rate than has been done before. The more we repeat the process, the better our technology becomes at it. These nature-positive solutions will be in the hands of growers by 2030.”

Performance by Design™ brings together generative AI, deep machine learning, structure-guided design and genome mining for antimicrobial peptides with the diverse expertise of Invaio’s R&D team.

Computational biologists, plant pathologists, microbiologists, formulation scientists, bioprocessing engineers, protein engineers, strain engineers and synthetic biologists work together to turn computational designs into practical crop protection solutions.

Designing for performance—and everything it takes to deliver it

Invaio’s Performance by Design™ platform uses a continuous design, test and learn cycle to build a pipeline of novel active ingredients.

The process starts with a clear crop protection need: controlling a particular pest or disease in a specific crop and growing environment. Alongside efficacy, we design for the characteristics that determine whether a solution can succeed commercially, including safety, stability, manufacturability, formulation and ease of application.

Results from testing feed back into the platform, helping AI improve subsequent designs, increase success rates and reduce discovery time. This continuous learning also allows us to broaden our scope to address more crops and crop threats.

“Finding the right control for a certain pest or disease used to be hit-and-miss. We made it a lot easier to get the hits and not the misses,” says Jahnavi Prasad, Head of Computational Biology.

Benefits of Performance by Design™

Help manage resistance

Resistance to existing crop protection products is a major challenge for the world’s food systems. Repeated use of the same modes of action can select for resistant pest and disease populations. Novel biological active ingredients with different modes of action can provide growers with additional tools to manage resistance and protect crop performance.

Reduce off-target impacts

Selectivity matters. Designing peptides to act against specific pests or diseases offers the potential to reduce impacts on beneficial organisms. Performance by Design™ considers these characteristics alongside efficacy, helping develop solutions that protect crops while supporting biodiversity.

Design for biodegradability

Peptides can break down naturally in the environment. Designing for effective crop protection alongside an appropriate environmental profile offers the potential to reduce persistence and accumulation in soil.

Fit existing farming practices

Performance must come with practicality. We combine active ingredient design with formulation and proprietary delivery technologies to improve reliability and make products easier to integrate into existing crop protection programs.

Breakthrough delivery increases efficacy

Creating a successful crop protection product requires more than finding the right active ingredient. Delivery influences how well an active ingredient reaches its target, how long it remains effective and how reliably it performs in the field.

Invaio has developed nature-derived lipid nanoparticles (NLPs) and microbe-derived particles (MDPs) to address these challenges. These delivery technologies are designed to enhance biological performance while supporting targeted delivery and biodegradability.

Trials against diamondback moth demonstrate the potential of this integrated approach. The pest, which has developed resistance to numerous chemical insecticides, causes substantial damage to crops including cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower.

In trials, a protein encapsulated in Invaio’s MDP delivery system performed two to five times better than the commercial biological benchmark and was as effective as the standard chemical insecticide at day 10, when growers typically respray to protect new plant growth.

A future designed around grower needs

The future of biological crop protection depends on products that deliver effective, reliable performance and fit the realities of farming.

Invaio’s Performance by Design™ platform brings together AI-enabled discovery, biological engineering, formulation and delivery to pursue that goal—creating a new generation of crop protection solutions designed from the outset to work for growers.