As the population of the world grows apace, with the earth set to be home to anything between 6.9 and 13.1 billion people by the year 2100, the race is on to find ways of producing enough food for all these mouths. Arable crops and vegetables, rather than livestock, are key to this challenge, meaning that it is of critical importance to not just find ways of boosting crop yields, but also of protecting crops from natural predators in the shape of plant diseases, weeds, fungi and plant-eating insects. In years gone by, chemical pesticides were generally viewed as being the answer to this problem. In today’s world, however, the emphasis is on decreasing our reliance on synthetic pesticides. This gives the reference substances produced by Extrasynthese, a French company based in Lyon, a real chance to shine!

Reference substances and crop protection

These substances, also called standards, are important precisely because they can be used to analyse the effectiveness of products in fields such as crop protection. With the move away from chemical pesticides because of worries about their impact on the environment, on human health, not to mention doubts as to their long-term effectiveness, there has been a decided shift back to more natural methods of crop protection. This has brought phytochemicals into the limelight, these being chemical compounds made by plants for the purpose of fighting off predators or diseases. The potential for harnessing the natural powers of phytochemicals to protect commercial crops and vegetables is obvious and has been the subject of much research. Extrasynthèse assists companies in the areas of agronomy and crop protection by maintaining an extensive herbal standard range. These products can be used to research the effectiveness of various phytochemicals. Additionally, the firm is also capable of creating tailor-made phytochemical libraries.

Standards: serving a wide range of industries

Although standards are used extensively in the agri-food industry, they are useful in a wide range of other industries. For example, since the foundation of Extrasynthèse in 1986, the company’s customer base has grown to encompass regulatory bodies, academia, the cosmetics industry, the healthcare sector, the pharmaceutical industry and many other sectors. The firm also applies its expertise in standards to its involvement in wider European research and development projects, as well as facilitating such research through its product lines.