Initially the goal was to keep the wriggling worms alive, to use a jolt of electricity to stimulate their nerve cells in the pursuit of scientific discovery. But the research device was malfunctioning and killing the nematodes outright.
Electrical engineer and entrepreneur Jason Crisp fixed the machine, nipping some stray voltage that was causing electrocutions. The worms lived. Done and done.
Except it wasn’t.
Crisp began wondering about useful applications of that electricity to target soil nematodes that can damage valuable crops and vegetation.
That spurred the idea for what is now Lisi Global, a Richland, Wash., startup that replaces chemical pesticides with devices that zap soil pests with a jolt akin to a controlled lightning strike.
For a decade, the company has doggedly kept at its goal, finding creative solutions to hardware challenges and quickly pivoting to seize new opportunities. Now Lisi is getting traction with two field tests this fall and admission into Calgary’s Creative Destruction Lab accelerator.
“Every step we’ve made has been a step forward. And everything we’ve tried has worked,” said Jeffery McComb, co-founder and chief operating officer. “And where it has fallen short, we have found what we needed to improve it.”
Lisi began its work shocking nematodes that damage golf turf, but now is demoing its technology in Massachusetts with a major railroad owner. The railroad needs to eradicate weeds overgrowing tracks running along Boston’s main drinking water reservoir — a spot where herbicides are not an option. Lisi also started testing its tech with Eastern Washington potato farmers battling nematodes.
“We’re just continuing to dig into these areas where the need is the greatest and the financial business case makes sense,” said Crisp, the company’s CEO.
‘Full mad scientist’
The basic concept of Lisi’s technology is relatively simple: put electrodes into soil, send a current of electricity between them and electrocute your target organism. The actual application is more complicated.
The technology must operate in nonuniform soil conditions. The amount of energy needs to be attuned to the target, whether it’s a nematode or weed, and it must be controlled efficiently and dissipated across an area of treatment.
But the parts for its unusual tech aren’t readily pulled from hardware or electronics store shelves. They had to get creative. Prototypes and demo machines have incorporated an amplifier from a friend’s Pink Floyd tribute band; U.S. Department of Energy surplussed items; high-voltage electronics from eBay; energy storage capacitors from Russia; and goods from Surplus Sales of Nebraska where you can go “full mad scientist,” Crisp said.
Even with these options, Crisp has sometimes spent half a year looking for a crucial part.
“The hardware,” he said, “was holding us back the entire time.”
Lisi has likewise tapped wide-ranging sources of expertise, including:
- Ekaterini Riga, the nematode scientist who inspired Crisp and is now a company co-founder and science and research advisor;
- high-voltage electronics talent from San Diego’s ARRS Technologies;
- and researchers at nearly a dozen institutions including Oregon State University (OSU), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and U.S. Department of Agriculture, which have done proof-of-concept trials with the technology.
The cast of characters is essential given the complexity of the task.
It creates a “high barrier to entry” in the space, Crisp said. “We’ve got all of that in-house and that gives us quite a head start.”
‘This technology is needed now’
While Lisi has been largely bootstrapped, the founders raised $1.8 million from friends and family in 2018 when they received their first of two patents.
Keith Tiegs, a potato farmer and owner of Northwest Biologic, which sells products to improve soil health, was one of those original Lisi investors. But what he’d really like to be is a customer.
At his farm in Pasco, Wash., Tiegs battles a variety of havoc-wreaking nematodes. Some interfere with root development, shrinking the number of potatoes per plant. Others impede the uptake of water and nutrients. One, the stubby root nematode, is a vector for a disease called tobacco rattle virus that harms many kinds of land and creates patches of corky growth in the potato’s flesh.
The pesticides traditionally used to fumigate fields are not working as well as they used to, Tiegs said. The chemicals also kill good bugs as well as bad. And farmers must wait about two weeks to work a field after treatment, risking soil erosion from wind.
The Lisi team has built a device for proof of concept testing that started last month.
“The quicker we can get this into ag production, the better,” Tiegs said. “We need to do it this fall. It has to happen. This technology is needed now.”
‘What we’re doing works’
The demonstration on the Massachusetts railroad started three weeks ago and the team is working with university researchers to measure its impact. The market could be huge — to maintain their tracks, U.S. railroad companies use three times more weed-killing glyphosate than farmers do, Crisp said, and plants are evolving to resist the chemical. If the pilot is successful, the railroad company could buy up to five of the weed-killing machines next year.
“We’re sitting here with the solution, bootstrapping our butts off, trying to get this into the market.”
– Jeffery McCombs, co-founder and COO of Lisi Global
Lisi is also participating in trials funded by two USDA grants awarded to OSU researchers to evaluate the technology as a pesticide replacement, and is applying for a USDA / Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.
And they’re looking to raise a seed round of venture capital to accelerate their efforts.
Few entrepreneurs have followed the electrified route to pest treatment. European ventures include RootWave in the United Kingdom and Crop.Zone in Germany. U.S. competitors include Missouri-based The Weed Zapper, but it delivers electricity to above-ground vegetation, rather than focusing specifically on the roots.
In Washington, startups Carbon Robotics and Aigen use lasers for targeted weed zapping via autonomous vehicles. Lisi offers a blanketed, soil-based approach.
The Lisi team said their solution works wherever they’ve tried it. Future customers could include hops farmers who need to eliminate past crops to prevent new varieties from mixing with them genetically, or Pacific Northwest wineries afflicted with a devastating louse that thrives on the roots of grape vines.
“It’s this slow rolling disaster for these industries,” McComb said of the farmers combating intractable pests. “We’re sitting here with the solution, bootstrapping our butts off, trying to get this into the market. It’s been frustrating when we know that what we’re doing works.”
