As the population of the world grows apace, with the earth set to be home to anything between 6.9 and 13.1 billion people by the year 2100, the race is on to find ways of producing enough food for all these mouths. Arable crops and vegetables, rather than livestock, are key to this challenge, meaning that it is of critical importance to not just find ways of boosting crop yields, but also of protecting crops from natural predators in the shape of plant diseases, weeds, fungi and plant-eating insects. In years gone by, chemical pesticides were generally viewed as being the answer to this problem. In today’s world, however, the emphasis is on decreasing our reliance on synthetic pesticides. This gives the reference substances produced by Extrasynthese, a French company based in Lyon, a real chance to shine!