Dupont, Syngenta Plan Bioinitiatives

At an April 10 press conference at the Biotechnology Industry Organization's BIO 2006 meeting, now under way in Chicago, DuPont and Swiss partner Syngenta announced that they have taken steps to enhance their seed traits business. Separately, DuPont said it was making a push into biofuels on its own.

For the seed traits initiative, DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred International unit and Syngenta have formed a 50???50 joint venture, under the name GreenLeaf Genetics, that will out-license corn and soybean proprietary breeding material from the two parent firms to other seed companies. Initially, the partners say, they plan to target small and family-owned U.S. and Canadian seed companies, but ultimately the joint venture, to be based in Omaha, Neb., could sell to seed companies worldwide.

In addition, the two companies have reached an agreement to cross-license certain corn and soybean traits that each company will market under its own seed brands. The agreement includes a license to allow Syngenta to market DuPont's Optimum GAT trait, which lends crops resistance to widely used glyphosates as well as to sulfonylurea and imidazolinone herbicides. The partners say the new trait will allow them to compete more effectively against Monsanto and its leading glyphosate-resistance technology. DuPont expects U.S. registration of the new trait in 2009.

According to Dean Oestreich, president of Pioneer, the joint-venture and licensing agreements with Syngenta "bring together the strength of two industry leaders to deliver new technologies to the market more quickly."

DuPont also says it has formed a new business unit, DuPont Biofuels, to commercialize biofuels technologies. The firm already has $300 million in annual sales tied to ethanol production, largely from corn seed sales. According to Chief Technology Officer Thomas M. Connelly, the unit will leverage the firm's capabilities "in agricultural biotechnology, metabolic engineering, chemistry, and process engineering."

The unit will capitalize on projects DuPont now has under way. They include efforts to breed corn seeds that lead to improved yields of ethanol from corn and the biorefinery consortium initiative DuPont leads for the Department of Energy with the goal of converting corn and other biomass feedstocks into sugars for use in the production of fuels and chemicals.