Alltech Crop Science, Lexington, Ky., on Jan. 17 announced that it has acquired Ideagro, Murica, Spain. Alltech said the deal joins two platforms to accelerate soil and crop research, and to enhance biological and other microorganism-based offerings to Alltech customers. Alltech said it has worked closely with the Ideagro team since that company’s founding 11 years ago.
“The combination of the Ideagro expertise with the reach and scale of Alltech will allow us to extend world-leading understanding of the interface between soil, crop, animal, and human health to the global market,” said Andy Thomas, CEO of Alltech Crop Science. “The potential implications of these insights cannot be understated as we endeavor to improve the vitality of our global food system, from the ground up.”
“We are facing a great growth opportunity for Ideagro because we are going to have better means and more technological capacity to develop our research, which will now have a global projection,” said Pedro Palazón, CEO of Ideagro. “We will no longer only study the soils of the Iberian Peninsula, but we will work with soils from all over the world to achieve more sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture.”
Ideagro has three laboratories and more than 20 scientists, with experimental research stations and fields for carrying out trials in Spain. To date, the company has researched more than 90 different crops and performed more than 10,000 physicochemical and biological analyses. This has led to the development of new agricultural strategies based on microorganisms.
Alltech Crop Science, a division of privately-held, family-owned Alltech, has been involved in the application of microbial fermentation and nutrigenomic research to optimize yields, enhance crop health, and maximize crop productivity for over 25 years.