Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc.’s Venerate bio-insecticide is now registered in California to provide pest control in fruit, nut, and vegetable crops.

Venerate is a new tool to help California growers control crop-damaging insect pests, fight the development of insect resistance, and reduce pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables.

This new broad-spectrum bio-insecticide is active against a wide array of chewing and sucking insects and mites but is easy on beneficial insects. It includes novel modes of action that stem from a diverse set of compounds produced by a bacterium discovered in MBI’s proprietary screening process.

Venerate works by exposure or ingestion where insects die 5-7 days after being sprayed with, or feeding on treated plant surfaces.

Venerate is approved for use in conventional and organic systems.

The bio-insecticide is available in a liquid formulation with flexibility to apply by ground or air, no limit on the number of applications allowed per season, and the minimum four-hour re-entry interval.

The product is non-toxic to fish, birds, and most beneficial insects, including honeybees. It has advantages of a zero-day pre-harvest interval and an exemption from maximum residue level tolerances - a measure of pesticide residue limits that must be met for most food crop exports.