• The Rennes-based start-up Agriodor develops perfumes from plants as an alternative to pesticides.
  • Its solutions target beet and rapeseed crops.
  • To continue its growth and finance its research, the company has just completed a fundraising of five million euros.

The decision came on 23 January, just four days after a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. After two exemptions granted by the government in 2021 and 2022, sugar beet growers are now banned from using neonicotinoids in their fields. These pesticides, which were widely used, were applied to control insects. Especially against aphids, vectors of jaundice that wreaks havoc on crops. In 2020, while neonicotinoids had been banned, an average of 30% of crops had been lost. Deprived of chemicals, beet growers are therefore gray, deploring the lack of effective alternative to protect their vegetables.

The solution could come from the Agriodor laboratory, which specializes in chemical ecology. Since 2019, its teams, located in the Biopôle nursery in Rennes, have been developing fragrances from plant extracts to fight against these pests. "We use plants that have a repellent effect on insects," says Ené Leppik, who founded the company with Camille Delpoux and Alain Thibault. Patented, their recipe is of course kept secret. "These are plants that are found in nature and from which we will extract the odorous molecules before making mixtures like a perfumer," says Camille Delpoux.

"30% fewer aphids in the first year"

Currently being tested in a dozen plots in northern and central France, their repellent fragrance aims to keep aphids away from beet plots and limit their proliferation. "We will disrupt their diet and reproduction with bad odors so that they transmit less of the virus," says Camille Delpoux.

A preventive treatment that produced encouraging first results according to its designers with "30% fewer aphids in the first year" on the plots tested. "This will not make all aphids disappear from the field but it is complementary to other solutions," says Camille Delpoux, who hopes to have the product put on the market in 2025.

Repellent or attractive fragrances

Agriodor is not only interested in beet cultivation. Since 2021, it has also marketed a perfume to fight bruche, a small beetle that attacks field beans and lentils. But rather than repel the insect as for the beetroot, the perfume will this time attract it to better trap it. "We develop specific odors for each targeted pest so that it does not disturb biodiversity in the fields," says Leppik.



Among the other perfumes under study, the Rennes start-up is also working on an alternative to phosmet, an insecticide banned since this autumn which was used in particular for the cultivation of rapeseed. To finance its research and continue its growth, Agriodor, which has about fifteen employees, has just completed a fundraising campaign from investors such as BNP Paribas Développement or Breizh Up.

  • Planet
  • Pesticides
  • Pollution
  • Agriculture
  • Insect
  • Plants
  • Perfume
  • Startup
  • Rennes
  • Brittany
  • Ille-et-Vilaine