Over the past decade, we have fine-tuned the properties of a chitosan-based product as a plant strengthener which we are offering under the name of CaraPlant. It is a well-defined mixture of second generation chitosans that perform reliably well in a wide range of plants, protecting them from stress and disease. CaraPlant is a chitosan hydrochloride and as such, falls under the category of a “basic substance” that can be used in agricultural without the need for further registration as a plant biostimulant or biopesticide. It is a concentrated solution that can be diluted 1:1000 (1 mL onto 1 L of water) and should be sprayed onto your plants regularly, about every ten days.

While CaraPlant is our general purpose plant strengthener, we are also developing chitosans for special applications. To this end, the chitosans are prepared and optimised using biotechnological methods which we have developed over the past decade. As an example, we know that chitosans which are best suited for foliar sprays differ from those for soil drenching, root dipping, or seed coating. Similarly, protection from different abiotic stresses is best achieved by some chitosans, while others are best for disease protection or growth promotion. We are also developing chitosans specifically optimised for different plant species.

The start-up AgriBluBio aims to bring to the markets the experience of 25 years of chitosan research in the team of Prof. Dr. Moerschbacher. AgriBluBio can provide second generation chitosans, with well-defined structures to address specific questions and problems in plant protection and beyond. We collaborate with ChitoProf at the University of Münster for state-of-the-art chitosan structural analysis and with Bex-Biotec, a successful earlier start-up from our group, for a broad range of functional analyses. We also collaborate with quality chitosan producers around the globe, and with another new start-up from alumnae of our group, greEnCAP, who uses our chitosans in their encapsulation technologies.