Agricultural Science Makes Organic Connection

LOGAN, Utah, Aug. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Frontier Scientific, Inc. (FSI) announces the expansion of its agricultural products offering through the acquisition of a leading supplier of insect products to provide researchers proven quality solutions for insecticide compound screening, seed development and crop protection.

Agricultural expansion is a natural fit for FSI's established areas of expertise in complex supply issues, custom chemistry capabilities, existing chemical offering, compound management for screening, and crop protection pipeline.

"This allows us to expand and strengthen current relationships and provide a solid foundation for future discovery, development and commercialization," said W. Tim Miller, President and CEO of FSI. "This is a unique way to complement our current applications by leveraging our existing capabilities," said Miller.

According to a report published by Transparency Market Research, the global crop protection market will grow to $71.8 billion in 2018.

"As the market grows, the need for testing against problem insects will grow. Our core competency is the consistent scaled production and delivery of insect products, principally Lepidopteran species, of agricultural interest," stated Dave Davis, Senior Director of Operations for this new business unit of FSI.

Existing agricultural projects within FSI include novel compounds in development and field testing to address citrus greening disease, methyl erythritol phosphate pathway inhibitors as herbicides, and light activated compounds being evaluated as fungicides to address crop problems like wheat rust and fusarium wilt in bananas and as insecticides against mosquito larvae and cherry fruit flies.

With this acquisition, FSI will also be expanding its existing protein expression capabilities using insect larvae as the expression host.

The business will operate as Frontier Agricultural Sciences (FSIAG) – www.fsiag.com-- in Newark, DE, at a specialized facility with state-of-the-art insect propagation, packaging and production technology, an operation and team which has shown market-proven consistency for 12 years.

About Frontier Scientific, Inc.:  Frontier Scientific, Inc., is a recognized developer and manufacturer of boronic acids, trifluoroborates, catalysts, porphyrin, and small molecule drug discovery compounds and provides custom compound  synthesis. Frontier Scientific Services, Inc., a compound logistics and scientific personnel in-sourcing division of FSI, provides solutions for sample management and other common issues when conducting research -- compound library curation, standardization and re-formatting, procurement, storage and distribution, and analytical services. Echelon Biosciences Inc. is the molecular biology division of FSI.

SOURCE Frontier Scientific, Inc.