TIME: How the Tech Behind a COVID-19 Vaccine is Helping Save Bees

GreenLight Biosciences feature in TIME for its honey bee protection solution and RNA-based crop protection product pipeline

Technology used to develop Covid-19 vaccines may also help combat varroa mite – pest in honeybee beekeepers have been struggling to control for years.  

A new tool is in the pipeline: Boston-based biotechnology company GreenLight Biosciences has developed an anti-mite RNA treatment for beehives that uses a similar technology to Pfizer’s breakout COVID-19 vaccine.

Learn more about GreenLight Biosciences honeybee protection solution here

Still in its infancy, this RNA-based technology heralds a new revolution in preventing disease and staving off pests across the agricultural spectrum, from the botrytis that beards blueberries and grapes with fuzzy gray mold to the Colorado potato beetle and maize-munching fall armyworm that are devastating crops from North America to southern Africa, and even the spider mites that suck sap from common houseplants. RNA manipulation has the potential to become a powerful new tool in the treatment of some of agriculture’s most pernicious pests, says Andrey Zarur, who co-founded GreenLight Biosciences in 2009, with the goal of finding biological solutions to the overuse of chemicals as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in the world’s food system. “RNA will be as revolutionary to our food supply as it has already been to human health through the COVID vaccines.”

Learn more about GreenLight Biosciences product pipeline here

Read the full Time article here