Elson Shields, a newly hired Cornell professor, was asked to tackle an invasive insect pest in Upstate New York. Alfalfa Snout Beetle is a major alfalfa pest in Northern New York, costing the state's dairy farmers millions each year.
Elson isolated and cultivated the perfect blend of persistent nematodes that would control Alfalfa Snout Beetle and eliminate it's economic impact on New York's dairy farmers. Through the years of research, Elson held one guiding principle - the solution needed to be scalable, easy to apply, and affordable for farmers.
Those same persistent nematodes were shown to control Western Corn Rootworm and over the next 9 years, field trials were conducted in New York, Texas, Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico to confirm this effect.
In 2019, Persistent BioControl was launched to make this revolutionary technology available to farmers across the country. Since persistence is central to making biocontrol nematodes affordable to farmers, we put it in our name!
Keegan spent his childhood as free labor for various research projects at the Shields' Cornell lab and escaped to the Marine Corps at 18. He has a background in technology commercialization, business operations, and finance.
Tony brings 30 years of nematode rearing expertise to Persistent BioControl and is responsible for many of the innovations that have made it possible. He manages the company's supply chain and production.
Elson discovered persistent biocontrol nematodes and pioneered their use in agriculture. He retired in 2022 after 36 years as a professor in the Dept. of Entomology at Cornell University and received the 2018 NYS IPM award for his nematode research.
