A spotless empty food-production hygiene area at the end of a shift, stainless surfaces receding into shadow.

Encapsulation for Biosecurity

Most botanical and oxidizing biosecurity actives work in the lab and fail in the barn because they evaporate, degrade or react before reaching the target. Vegalab's platform builds up to 20 programmable biopolymer layers around an active to control when and where it is released. This section explains the specific delivery problems it addresses.

Residual and volatility

Essential oils such as geraniol and peppermint oil are potent on contact but evaporate from treated surfaces in days. Two pages cover this. Residual activity explains why unencapsulated botanicals hold a few days against ticks and what published encapsulation work shows. Volatility control explains how layer count, shell composition and core oil phase set a release rate, and what that means for reapplication intervals in housing and yards. Together they explain why a botanical that is active in a bioassay often disappoints in a barn or yard.

Penetration and dose

A spider mite and an engorged tick present very different barriers. Cuticle penetration compares mite and tick cuticle and how oil carriers and shell chemistry affect uptake. The dose gap page sets out the arithmetic: Spider Mite Control at 1:500 delivers about 0.57 mg/mL geraniol, while published tick endpoints sit roughly 10 to 20 times higher. It explains why our tick program is a separate product, not a higher dose of an existing one.

Oxidizer stability

Chlorine dioxide is an effective oxidizing disinfectant that is difficult to ship and store as a gas or solution. Chlorine dioxide stabilization explains how Vetpure Disinfectant holds precursors in a nano-encapsulated powder that dissolves to at least 98% ClO2 purity and remains stable in solution for up to one month, without forming trihalomethanes or haloacetic acids. The page also covers how encapsulated precursor chemistry supports tablet and sachet formats for water and surfaces, and why dose accuracy at use matters more than label concentration on the drum.

Key facts

  • Vegalab's platform builds multi-layer biodegradable capsules with up to 20 programmable layers from food-grade biopolymers (Vegalab technology platform, /technology).
  • In residential field trials, an emulsifiable nootkatone gave full control of Ixodes scapularis nymphs for one week, falling to 0% by week 3, while a lignin-encapsulated formulation gave 100% control for 8 weeks in a later season (Bharadwaj et al. 2012, J Med Entomol 49:1035).
  • Chlorine dioxide is generated on site in most applications because it cannot be shipped as a compressed gas (US EPA 1999, Alternative Disinfectants and Oxidants Guidance Manual, EPA 815-R-99-014).

How our delivery technology applies

The common thread is release control. For volatile botanicals, shells slow evaporation and extend residual. For contact actives, oil-compatible cores improve transfer across waxy cuticle. For chlorine dioxide, encapsulation separates reactive precursors until dissolution, so the oxidizer forms on demand at high purity. Each page states what is demonstrated and what is still in trial.

Partners and distributors: request the Biosecurity technology briefing.

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