AgroSustain's EIC Accelerator Fungicide Unapproved, Coating Sold

AgroSustain set out to replace synthetic fungicides on fruit and vegetables with molecules found in plants of the cabbage family. In the European Commission's October 2020 round of the EIC Accelerator pilot, the Swiss start-up was selected for a grant-only award to commercialise "AgroStore", a natural fungicide it said would protect crops in the field as well as synthetic products do and keep harvested produce fresh "by a minimum of 7 days and up to 4 months", according to CORDIS. The Commission's list of selected companies lists AgroSustain SA of Nyon alone for the project. The grant was to pay for toxicity certification, regulatory approval and product registration, with "full market entry in 2023".

Six years after its selection, AgroSustain is active and still run by its co-founder Olga Dubey, but the products on its website are an edible post-harvest coating called Afondo, a foliar "sealing agent" called Tornado and organic biocoatings still in trials. None of them is described as a fungicide, and no registration of the AgroStore fungicide has been announced by the company or anyone else.

Where AgroSustain Stands Now

The Swiss commercial register lists AgroSustain SA as existing, with its seat at Rue de Lausanne 64 in Renens, where it moved in 2021 from the Agroscope research campus at Changins near Nyon, according to Zefix. The register shows steady corporate activity: capital increases published in August 2024, July 2025 and January 2026, a change of chair in July 2024 from Olga Dubey to Olivier Blanc, and board changes in January 2025, December 2025 and June 2026. In January 2026 the shareholders rewrote the company's purpose to add "crop strengtheners and fertilisers" next to pest control, food additives and sustainable packaging, a change that matches the Tornado product rather than a fungicide.

Commercially, the clearest recent evidence comes from Westfalia Fruit, the avocado group. In October 2025 Westfalia said it had begun commercial trials of Afondo with selected customers in Europe after about three years of tests on avocados and limes, according to Fresh Plaza and Fruit Today. The two reports differ on where: Fresh Plaza names Peru, Colombia, Chile, South Africa and Tanzania, Fruit Today only Colombia, Chile and Peru. In February 2026 AgroSustain presented Afondo together with labelling maker Multivac as a way to cut plastic packaging, according to Fresh Plaza.

From Fungicide to Coating

AgroSustain grew out of Olga Dubey's PhD work at the University of Lausanne on how plants resist moulds. The founders say they identified more than 60 antifungal compounds in plants, a figure repeated in the company's 2018 seed announcement and in the CORDIS summary of its first EU project. The first product was to be a post-harvest spray called AgroShelf+, sold to storage operators and retailers. In January 2020 Dubey described it to AgFunder News as a slow-release treatment whose active ingredient "will no longer be detectable on the crop" once it has done its work.

The fungicide at the heart of the EIC project combined two active ingredients derived from glucosinolates, compounds produced by plants of the cabbage family, according to the project's final periodic report. Synthetic fungicides from BASF, ChemChina, Corteva and Bayer dominate the market, the report notes; biological alternatives leave no residues but often need repeated applications. Either kind has to pass a pesticide authorisation process before sale, a process the European Commission's Farm to Fork strategy promised in 2020 to shorten. The EIC project was meant to take AgroStore through that process.

A coating is a different and simpler product. Afondo, made of vegetable oils and edible emulsifiers, bonds to the fruit's natural wax and forms a thin, breathable barrier that slows water loss and seals micro-wounds through which moulds enter, according to EIT Climate-KIC and two Fresh Plaza reports from October 2025 and February 2026. It is a physical barrier, and it is marketed as a way to reduce post-harvest fungicide treatments. AgroSustain's product page says Afondo "is authorized for use across all fresh fruit categories in Europe", without naming the legal basis or the authorities involved.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

AgroStore ran from 1 February 2021 to 30 June 2023, ending on schedule, with a total cost of €3,561,250 and an EU contribution of €2,492,875, according to CORDIS. It followed a six-month SME Instrument Phase 1 study, AgroShelf, which received €50,000 from December 2018 to May 2019 and promised regulatory approval of AgroShelf+ in 2022, according to its CORDIS report. Press releases at the time called the EIC grant "EUR 2.4 million", as did Startupticker; CORDIS gives the exact figure.

The final report describes three strands of work: upscaling, formulating and field-testing the glucosinolate fungicide; developing a plant-based coating that forms "an invisible amorph barrier" on crops; and screening extracts of marine organisms for new biological fungicides. Field trials with Agroscope in Switzerland and Keith Norman Consultancy in the UK covered grapevine, strawberry, tomato, wheat, barley and oilseed rape. The report calls the results "promising" but says more field tests were needed to raise efficacy, and that the chemical synthesis of the fungicide still produced too much waste and had to be reworked with outside chemistry firms in 2022 and 2023. It reports three marine extracts with antifungal activity. It does not report a registration filing, a toxicity certification or a market launch of AgroStore.

1. Marketable version of the natural fungicidePartlyField trials run, efficacy and synthesis still being optimised at project end (CORDIS report).
2. Toxicity certification, regulatory approval and registrationNot deliveredNo approval or registration announced by the company or a third party.
3. Full market entry of AgroStore in 2023Not deliveredNo fungicide on the product list.
4. Plant-based coating for post-harvest protectionDeliveredAfondo on sale; Westfalia commercial trials from October 2025 (Fruit Today).
5. Pilot trials with producers, retailers and fruit brandsDeliveredMore than 15 pilot trials signed by February 2022 (Startupticker); avocado and lime trials with Westfalia.

The Money and the People

AgroSustain raised CHF 1.1 million in seed money in December 2018 from private investors and family offices, after support from Venture Kick and a FIT seed loan from the canton of Vaud, according to Startupticker. California's Agroecology Capital invested an undisclosed sum in early 2020, AgFunder News reported. In March 2021 the Swiss fruit importer Giovanelli Fruchtimport AG became a strategic investor; its chief executive Raphael Weiss said joint product trials had been very promising, according to Startupticker. A board member named Raphael Weiss, of Wädenswil and living in Wollerau, sat on AgroSustain's board from June 2023 to January 2025, the register shows; it does not say whether he is the Giovanelli executive.

The Series A closed in July 2021 at CHF 4.8 million, a total that included the EIC grant. It was led by JD Investments, a family office in Zug, with Privilège Ventures and BayWa AG, a listed agriculture, energy and building materials group, according to Venture Kick and Startupticker. Both releases already put the coating first: the money was for "the European launch of its natural coating planned for Q1, 2022", with the antifungal work second. A FIT Tech Growth loan followed in February 2022, when the company had 11 employees, said the coating was "fully developed and certified" and expected its commercial launch in March 2022 with two wholesalers and retailers, according to Startupticker.

No later funding round could be found in public sources. The register shows the number of shares rising from 1,545,671 in August 2022 to 2,051,815 in January 2026, with the June 2023 and August 2024 increases paid partly by converting CHF 989,973 and CHF 519,993 of loans into shares, according to Zefix. How much cash came in is not public. As a Swiss private company, AgroSustain does not publish its accounts, so revenue, losses and equity could not be verified.

Staff numbers have barely moved: 11 employees in February 2022, and a team of over ten specialists active in more than five countries in October 2024, according to EIT Climate-KIC. The patent count has grown in the company's telling: three patents in the CORDIS report, four filed in the February 2022 release, seven patents in the Climate-KIC profile and "10 patent families" on the company website. Which of these are granted could not be verified.

AgroSustain does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all pages on 18 October 2026, which is consistent with its grant-only award.

What It Sells Today

Tornado is a foliar spray that, the company says, forms an invisible barrier on leaves and helps plants withstand drought and salinity. Its product page says it is available for strawberries, tomatoes and grapes, new "this year" in Portugal, Spain and Greece, and claims grape yields up to 37% higher under drought stress. No independent trial results for Tornado could be found. The organic biocoatings are "currently undergoing rigorous efficacy trials and pending regional certifications", according to the biocoating page; Olga Dubey told Fruit Today in October 2025 that AgroSustain was "preparing to launch a bio-coating for organic crops".

The company lists its customers on its website only in anonymised form: a Swiss importer founded in 1906, a global avocado producer, an international fruit exporter, a Sicilian organic passion fruit farm and a Spanish tropical fruit producer. Westfalia is the only customer that has spoken publicly; its head of innovation, Andrew Mitchell, told Fruit Today that Afondo "delivers better value and results than other coatings available on the market". Sales volumes have not been disclosed.

Why It Matters for Europe

AgroSustain's original pitch sat squarely within EU policy. The Farm to Fork strategy of May 2020 set out to "reduce the overall use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50%" by 2030 and to ease market access for plant protection products containing biological active substances. Food waste is the second link: the EU wastes about 60 million tonnes of food a year, and rules adopted by the European Parliament in September 2025 require a 30% cut in retail, restaurants and households and a 10% cut in processing by 2030, according to the European Parliament. A coating that keeps imported avocados and limes fresh longer, and lets them travel by sea instead of air as the company claims, speaks to the waste target. A registered natural fungicide would have spoken to the pesticide target too, and that is the part the grant has not yet produced.

The Verdict

This article is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout. AgroSustain has not been asked for comment.