Natura Palm

Palm trees are dyingfrom the inside.We want to save them.

The red palm weevil and the palm moth kill palms through their larvae, from the Persian Gulf to the French Riviera. Natura Palm is developing a 100% natural product against these larvae and is looking for partners to validate it, get it authorised and bring it to market.

Understand the problemFund the project
heart bark

What you cannot see

The palm looks healthy while the larva hollows it out. Scroll to follow 18 months inside the trunk.

18months without a visible symptom
  1. Month 0. The palm moth lays its eggs on the palm. From the outside, nothing changes.
  2. Month 4. The caterpillar bores tunnels through the trunk. The palm can still be sold, moved, exported: it is already infested.
  3. Month 9. Beyond this point, applied nematodes show no measured effect in published trials.
  4. Month 18. The first signs appear: sawdust, perforated fronds, a twisted trunk. The damage is done.
Seen from outside, the palm keeps its colour almost to the end.

Life cycle of the palm moth (Paysandisia archon): 10.5 to 18.5 months inside the palm, often without symptoms (EPPO). The red palm weevil is faster: 40 to 160 days per larval generation, several generations a year in warm climates (EPPO). The tunnel layout is an illustration.

A loss already counted

Losses run to hundreds of millions of euros, and they are underestimated: no country keeps a census of its ornamental palms.

€483mof palms destroyed or infested in the Mediterranean basin, mainly by the weevilFAO, 2017
100,000–150,000Canary Island date palms lost in France from 2006 to 2018, 80–91% paid for by private ownersFrench National Assembly, 2019
0.95 million haof date palms exposed in the Near East and North Africa, including 48 million young palmsFAO, 2017
90%of production lost in nurseries of the Marche region, Italy, in 2003EPPO

See the full ecological and financial cost

Why nothing stops them

Authorised methods are partial, must be repeated several times a year, or work against only one of the two pests.

The only effective insecticide targets the weevil alone and is highly toxic to bees. The authorised biocontrol product has an efficacy the French agency Anses calls "variable and partial". Governments are withdrawing from compulsory control: France ended it for the weevil on 1 November 2025. Over ten years, protecting a palm often costs more than cutting it down.

Read the full analysis
Dead date palm with dried, hanging fronds after a red palm weevil attack
Photo: Rickjpelleg, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The Palmeral of Elche, Spain, a World Heritage site
Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Our answer

A 100% natural product aimed at the larvae of both pests, where current solutions fail.

Natura Palm created, developed and tested it. Its formula stays confidential until it is protected. Funding will pay for independent trials to prove its efficacy, for the marketing authorisation, then for production and distribution.

Discover the solutionContact us