Fungicides have a pivotal role in crop protection. They constitute the largest group of pesticides within a rapidly growing market. However, current chemical fungicides raise environmental and health concerns, which resulted in changing legislation to spur the development of eco-friendly alternatives in a more integrated crop protection approach.

Enzyme-based antimicrobials are till today only focused against bacteria using enzymes that degrade peptidoglycan. Fungi have a cell wall composed of chitin and chitinases degrading chitin show a high potential. The project team combines the enzyme engineering expertise of Yves Briers in the field of enzyme-based antibacterials with the expertise of Kris Audenaert in the field of crop-fungus pathology to create ‘ntiFUNzymes’with a dual mode-of-action against plant fungal infections in the tomato-Botrytis cinerea system.

We aim to deliver the technical feasability of the AntiFUNzymes concept with a dual mode-of-action, demonstrating the different innovative steps. We envision to require all necessary data to initiate a priority application. In the post-trajectory we aim to take a balanced decision in follow-up funding to expand the concept to other plant-fungus systems by strategic research funding (FWO-SB, FWO-SBO) followed by valorisation of the generated IP by direct interaction with companies.