Research - Activities

Introduction

ECOSYL Products is a driving force in the research and development of new technologies and management techniques to improve the efficiency of animal production from forage.


bacteria

The research group, based at the company's purpose built headquarters at Stokesley, in North Yorkshire, UK, was originally set up by director Dr Terry Owen, a specialist in microbiology and forage science. Since Dr Owen's retirement in 2005 the team is led by Research Manager Gordon Marley.

Research is conducted at the company's own laboratories in North Yorkshire, in collaboration with universities, colleges and research institutes in the UK and around the world and through its close relationships with the farming community, on practical family farms.

Open policy

A long tradition of research and development traces back to ECOSYL Products' origin as part of ICI Agriculture and the same principles of developing proven, cost effective products still holds true today.

The company encourages the independent authentication of research by publication in the scientific press. It seeks to make access to all results and papers involving its products as easy as possible and provides briefings, dossiers, publications and advice to researchers, advisors, farmers and the agriculture media on a regular basis.

Key technology

MTD⁄1

During its years of research and development, the ECOSYL Products team has developed important advances and World leading expertise in five key areas of technology:

DoubleAction Technology

Current activities

The Research Group has several areas of focus

  • Quality Control - ensuring that our current products meet specification.
  • Product Formulation – reviewing product components to ensure they meet the high quality standards we set for the product range.
  • Product Development – developing novel bacterial systems from concepts to product launch.
  • New strain selection – the Group focuses on developing new strains of silage bacteria which show novel properties.
counting

Current activities

The most recent products launched as a result of our near market research and development activity are:

The launch of DoubleAction ECOCORN in mid-2001 was very successful. The culmination of five years research, it marked the public launch of DoubleAction Technology and significantly increased the company's sales in the UK wholecrop cereals and maize silage sector.

Two further products emanating from the same research project, DoubleAction ECOSYL and DoubleAction ECOBALE were launched in the UK in 2002 and are now actively sold in Europe.

DoubleAction ECOBALE includes a further strand of research into the antimicrobial effects of bacterial combinations. BSTAT⁄2 a specific strain of Pediococcus pentosaceus has been found to significantly reduce the development of Listeria bacteria in baled silage when applied in combination with MTD⁄1. Baled silage is very prone to infection with Listeria bacteria which cause 'silage eye' in cattle and listeriosis in sheep.

sieving

Most recently, in response to a demand from silage contractors for lower volume application to minimise downtime, ECOSYL's expertise in formulation technology has led to the development of the ECOSYL ULV system. To concentrate an inoculant applying 1 million bacteria⁄g forage to allow application at just 10 to 20ml⁄t without loss of bacterial viability was an extremely difficult task for the research team and currently ECOSYL ULV is the only product on the market able to do this. The system developed by the Research Group includes a new highly concentrated inoculant, ECOSYL ULV, and a specially designed applicator, the ECOSYLER.