Agricultural innovation company, Kannar Earth Science, Ltd. of Lawrenceville, GA, has exclusively licensed technology from Cornell University of Ithaca, NY and is sponsoring research to produce and commercialize Multi-Seed Pellets (MSP). MSP is a newly designed pellet for planting milkweed and other pollinator plant seeds over millions of acres to revitalize Monarch butterfly and other pollinator populations. Field trials are planned in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024.  

“The implications for successfully bringing MSP from the research and development stage to fields, forests, and roadsides across the country are enormous,” said Dr. Alan George Taylor, a seed science and technology professor from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell AgriTech. “We expect growers and landowners to be very interested in adopting seed pellets that facilitate large-scale planting of habitats for pollinators.”     

The plight of bees and butterflies continues to make headlines as the threats from habitat loss and climate change grow. Plant species that support and feed pollinators are essential to ecosystems and agriculture. Researchers at Cornell developed a method of embedding small milkweed and other pollinator seeds into pellets compatible with standard planting equipment to overcome the limitations and expense of current broadcasting or hand-planting methods.  

Kannar holds an exclusive global license on the patent-pending technology and is funding and undertaking the work in their facility to develop MSP for commercial production. “We specialize in nature-friendly seed and crop technologies, so we understand how to get this tool from the lab to the targeted customers. My team is very motivated to contribute solutions for such an impactful issue,” said Kannar CEO Sam Cloete. MSP is expected to be commercially available in 2025.