UPL Launches NeoTackler Bioinsecticide With Aurivis Tech
11 November 2026, Ituverava, BR: UPL Brasil has launched NeoTackler, a bioinsecticide built on the fungus Beauveria bassiana, using a new formulation technology the company calls Aurivis, which it describes as unprecedented worldwide and patented. The product was developed by UPL’s team in Brazil at its plant in Ituverava, in the interior of São Paulo state, and marks the first commercial use of the Aurivis platform anywhere, with the company saying it plans to expand the technology into other markets afterward.
NeoTackler targets three pests that are persistent problems for Brazilian row-crop and coffee growers: corn leafhopper (Dalbulus maidis), whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) and coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei). Corn leafhopper in particular has become one of the costliest pests in Brazilian maize production in recent seasons, both directly and as a vector for corn stunt disease.
Addressing the fungus’s weaknesses
Beauveria bassiana has long been used as a biological insecticide, but the fungus is sensitive to environmental conditions and is naturally hydrophobic, meaning it disperses poorly when mixed with water for spraying. UPL says Aurivis was designed specifically to address that limitation. The technology combines coformulants intended to protect and stabilize the fungus’s spores, known as conidia, so that they spread evenly across the leaf surface and stay viable until they come into contact with the target pest. The company also says products using the technology can be stored for up to twelve months without refrigeration, which it describes as the longest shelf life among bioinsecticides currently on the market, and that NeoTackler has shown compatibility with more than 90 percent of the other pesticide products UPL tested it alongside.
Trial results across a dozen studies
UPL reported results from twelve field studies conducted in different growing regions, saying the product delivered an average yield increase of 3.5 percent across those trials. In a soybean trial in Catalão, in the state of Goiás, the company reported the following results:
| Treatment | Yield (bags/hectare) |
|---|---|
| Untreated | 53.4 |
| NeoTackler alone | 55.0 |
| Sperto (chemical insecticide) alone | 56.1 |
| NeoTackler plus Sperto combined | 57.7 |
The combined treatment produced a gain of 4.3 bags per hectare over the untreated plot, an improvement of roughly 8 percent. For corn leafhopper control specifically, UPL said average control efficacy improved by 3 percentage points across the trial network, reaching as high as 19 percentage points in a trial conducted in Jataí, also in Goiás state. These figures come from UPL’s own trial program and have not yet been independently replicated in published third-party research.
UPL Brasil chief executive Cristiano Figueiredo and the company’s biocontrol manager, Mariana Yama, both presented the launch as a step toward combining biological and chemical modes of action rather than replacing one with the other, pointing to the Catalão trial’s combination result as the strongest outcome in the test. Yama said the ambition behind Aurivis was to eventually bring the formulation approach to other regions facing similar climate and pest pressure challenges.
The launch comes as biological crop protection products have been gaining a larger share of new product announcements across Latin America’s largest agricultural markets, with formulation technology increasingly cited by manufacturers as the main barrier to making biologicals as reliable in the field as synthetic chemistries. UPL has positioned NeoTackler as a complement to its existing synthetic insecticide portfolio for the same pests rather than a standalone replacement, reflected in the combination data the company highlighted from its own trials.
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