Moa Technology is pleased to announce that Professor Lee Sweetlove, a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, has joined our team. Professor Sweetlove will be working to further our understanding of the novel herbicidal modes of action discovered by Moa, which we are currently developing into safe, effective, and affordable solutions to protect harvests from crop-destroying weeds.
Professor Sweetlove has over 30 years of experience in plant science and is internationally recognised for his work in deciphering fluxes in plant metabolic networks. His expertise and network will be invaluable to Moa in helping to prioritise and deliver our innovative plant protection solutions.
Spun out of Oxford University in 2017, Moa has developed proprietary technology to discover a whole new generation of herbicidal modes of action to provide farmers with modern crop protection solutions that break weed resistance. In the last three years, Moa’s GALAXY platform has already screened over 750,000 compounds and discovered over 70 promising novel herbicidal mode of action areas. In July 2024, Moa signed a major partnership with Nufarm to co-develop and commercialise one of these new chemical series.
Professor Sweetlove commented:
“Working with Moa is an ideal opportunity for me to put my many years of experience in plant biochemistry and metabolism research to direct practical use. I am very excited to be working with this world-class scientific team on deepening our understanding of the dozens of novel herbicidal modes of action already discovered by the company and helping to progress these solutions as quickly as possible to the field.”
Dr Virginia Corless, Chief Executive of Moa Technology, adds:
“As we grow ever closer to bringing a new generation of modern, safe, and effective herbicides to farmers’ fields, we are delighted to welcome Professor Lee Sweetlove to our team. From the outset, Moa has combined the most innovative academic minds in the world with the best commercial talent in the industry to address the urgent global problem of weed resistance. Following our appointments in the last year of Hartmut van Lengerich, former SVP at Bayer Global Crop Protection, as Chair of the Moa Board, and Apostolos Klontzaris, formerly of Bayer Crop Science and Syngenta Crop Protection, as Chief Business Officer, Lee’s appointment will help ensure our expertise at the leading edge of weed biology remains second to none.”