Counting the Results of Fyteko's EIC Accelerator Drought Spray

Fyteko sells one idea in several bottles: a molecule that plants already use as a stress signal, applied before a heat wave or a dry spell so the crop is primed when it hits. The Brussels company was selected in the EIC Accelerator pilot's January 2020 cut-off, grant only, and received an EU contribution of €1,933,268.75 towards a €2,761,812.50 project called NURSPRAY, which ran from 1 May 2020 to 31 December 2022, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of the 8 January 2020 winners names Fyteko of Brussels as the only company on the project.

The plan was concrete: improve the formulations, scale up production, run field trials in eight EU countries, "secure CE Marking" under the new EU fertilising products rules and prepare a European launch in 2022 and 2023. Six years after selection, most of that has happened, with one important exception. The products are on sale through distributors in Europe and Latin America, and the company raised €13 million in 2025. But Fyteko reached the market through national approvals, and no CE-marked product has been announced.

Where Fyteko Stands Now

Fyteko is an active company. The Belgian company register lists it as active in a "normal situation", with a new director appointed on 25 June 2026, according to the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises. It filed its 2025 accounts with the National Bank of Belgium on 16 July 2026, and its Official Gazette file shows board changes published as recently as August 2026. No insolvency or liquidation appears in either record.

Commercially, the activity is now mostly outside the EU. Fyteko's own news page lists a distribution deal with Point Group for Latin America in May 2025, starting in Peru, which Fertilizer Daily also reported; an exclusive deal with Kwizda Agro for Austria, Hungary and Romania in July 2025; a partnership with the Brazilian biologicals firm Agrilife in March 2026; a deal with Anasac for cherries, table grapes and apples in Chile in April 2026; and an extension of the Point Group deal to Colombia and Ecuador in May 2026, after a launch in Peru, where NURSPRAY HC is sold under the TRUST brand. Before that, in October 2023, Janssen PMP, a unit of Janssen Pharmaceutica, signed up to distribute Nurspray in 11 countries across Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas after a two-year evaluation, AgriBusiness Global reported.

The scale claims come from the company. Fyteko says its products treated more than 500,000 hectares in 2024, a figure repeated by Silicon Canals and Fertilizer Daily from its statements; no distributor or independent source has published sales volumes, so the number could not be verified. The trial count differs between sources: the company's website now claims more than 800 successful trials, while Silicon Canals reported more than 500 field trials in February 2025.

The Technology: a Stress Signal in a Bottle

Most biostimulants on the market are extracts, mixtures or microorganisms whose active ingredient is hard to pin down. Fyteko's are built on hydroxycinnamic acid oligomers, short chains of phenolic compounds that occur in plant cell walls and act as a signal. In the company's description, the molecule "primes" the plant so that it produces osmoprotectants and antioxidants before drought or heat strikes and recovers faster afterwards, according to the CORDIS project report and the NURSPRAY product page. The molecule is made by enzymatic synthesis, a platform Fyteko now also uses for a herbicide enhancer and early-stage biopesticides, according to AgNavigator and the company's pipeline page.

The core patent, "Bioactive composition for improving stress tolerance of plants", names Cabrera and Wegria as inventors and has a priority date of 15 September 2015; its family includes a granted European patent and a US patent, according to Google Patents.

The "single molecule" description needs one qualification. The French authorisation for NURSEED HC lists two guaranteed active contents: 0.58% hydroxycinnamic acid oligomers and 1.17% chito-oligosaccharides, according to the ANSES decision of 17 December 2021.

Independent evidence is thin but exists. A 2024 open-field study on tomatoes by two researchers at the Universidad de Las Américas in Quito, with no Fyteko author listed, reported that Nurspray improved growth, flowering, yield and fruit quality, best with three applications at different crop stages, according to the paper in Agronomy. The CORDIS report said Fyteko itself aimed to publish its data in peer-reviewed journals in the following year. Its co-founders appear as co-authors on two 2022 papers, one on a treatment against wheat powdery mildew and one on soybean root nodulation, but a search of Europe PMC and OpenAlex found no peer-reviewed paper from the company presenting its drought field trial data.

What NURSPRAY Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project ran 32 months, from May 2020 to December 2022; Fyteko's partners page describes it as a two-year project. The final report on CORDIS says the work was "highly impacted" by the COVID-19 pandemic but lists results: new formulations, NURSPRAY HC and NURSEED HC, developed "to match CE requirements"; production of the oligomers and the final products "upscaled and industrialised"; large field trial programmes in both hemispheres from 2020 to 2022, with about 80% positive results; more than 30 companies testing the products; and six distribution agreements signed. On regulation, it says approval was obtained "using national framework (mutual recognition process)" in the most important countries "whilst waiting for the possibility to register" under Regulation (EU) 2019/1009, "post project completion".

1. Improve formulationsDeliveredNURSPRAY HC, NURSEED HC and NURSEED MAX are listed products; NURSEED HC was approved in France in December 2021.
2. Upscale productionDeliveredReported "upscaled and industrialised" on CORDIS; distributors now supply it in several countries.
3. Field trials in eight EU countriesDeliveredStated by Fyteko and the CORDIS report; the trial data are not public.
4. Secure CE markingNot achievedNot obtained during the project; no CE-marked product announced since.
5. European launch, 2022 to 2023DeliveredFyteko dates its EU sales to 2022 to 2024; Janssen PMP deal in October 2023.

The CE mark matters because it is what lets a fertilising product be sold across the EU "without additional formalities"; without it, manufacturers sell under the national rules of each country, as the European Commission explains. Fyteko's French authorisation, granted because NURSEED HC was "legally placed on the market in Belgium", is that national route. Neither the company's website nor its announcements since 2023 mention a CE mark, so by this article's standard the milestone was not delivered. The European launch did happen: Fyteko's company history says EU sales began in the 2022 to 2024 period, and Silicon Canals reports an EU-wide launch in 2023.

The Money

The €13 million Series B was announced in February 2025 and led by Crédit Mutuel Impact, with SFPIM, Supernova Invest, IMBC, finance&invest.brussels, EIT Food and the long-standing shareholder Innovation Fund, according to AgNavigator and the law firm CMS, which advised the company and also mentions secondary share sales. The money arrived before the announcement: the 2024 accounts show registered capital rising from €1,843,665.57 to €14,874,356.93 and cash of €10.4 million at the end of 2024, and the company register dates the board seats held for Crédit Mutuel, SFPIM and Supernova from 20 December 2024. The EIC Fund's list of invested companies does not include Fyteko, consistent with its grant-only award.

The accounts show the cost of the push abroad. Fyteko made a net profit of €294,844 in 2021, during the EIC project, then lost €369,321 in 2022, €808,738 in 2023, €1,848,590 in 2024 and €2,366,093 in 2025. Its gross margin, the top line in its abbreviated accounts, fell from €977,708 in 2021 to minus €44,457 in 2025. Because those accounts do not separate product sales from other operating income such as grants, the decline cannot be read directly as falling sales. Equity stood at €9.95 million at the end of 2025, with €7.5 million in short-term investments and €143,219 in cash, according to the filed accounts.

Staff grew with the money. Average full-time equivalents rose from 6.9 in 2020 to 15.7 in 2025, with a dip to 11.8 in 2024. The company's website speaks of "more than 20 experts", which is a head count rather than an annual average and may include people who are not employees.

Why Europe Should Care

The European Commission's Farm to Fork strategy, launched in May 2020 in the same month the NURSPRAY project started, set targets to cut the use and risk of pesticides by 50% and the use of fertilisers by at least 20%, according to the Commission's announcement. The EU's fertilising products rules, which cover plant biostimulants, offer such products a single market through CE marking. Fyteko's herbicide enhancer, which the company says allows herbicide doses to be cut by 30% to 50%, points in the same direction, though it is not yet a listed product.

A European company with a patented, defined active ingredient fits that policy well. But Fyteko's newest deals are in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile, and the EU-wide market access the grant was meant to secure has not been announced. Europe's money helped build a product that is, for now, growing faster abroad.

The Verdict

Fyteko has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.