Kerry Marine Biotech Company Wins Award for Seaweed-Based Crop Stimulant

15th September 2021

James Maloney of Enterprise Ireland Centre presenting Paddy Casey of “Target Fertilisers” and Oliver Kiernan of “Brandon Bioscience” with Innovation Arena Awards this week

Marine biotech company Brandon Bioscience has won an Enterprise Ireland award for a new product that draws extracts from common brown seaweed.

The extract can be used as a crop "bio-stimulant" in fertiliser, which has the potential to reduce chemical nitrogen input on farms by up to 20 per cent.

Brandon Bioscience is working with traditional fertiliser manufacturer Target Fertilisers on the product, which won this year's overall Enterprise Ireland Innovation Arena Award.

The awards for the most innovative Irish agritech and agri-engineering products were announced today by Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail, Damien English.

The best overall start-up award has been given to Jennifer and Kevin Corley, founders of EquiTrace which is an app that works with a horse’s microchip to identify, locate and track individual animals as they move while also recording animal temperature and health records.

The awards are normally given at the National Ploughing Championships. This year’s competition was moved online due to the cancellation of the event as a result of the pandemic.

More than 50 entries were received for this year’s contest, with 28 selected for virtual pitching, according to Enterprise Ireland.

Published in Seaweed, Marine Science

Published in Seaweed

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About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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