DuPont and Biotique Systems to Share Research

Posted by Matt Hopkins|23 May 2011

DES MOINES, Iowa, and RENO, Nev. — DuPont and Biotique Systems, Inc., have entered into a research alliance to accelerate genetic discovery in agricultural crops globally, according to a press release.

Under the agreement, Biotique will provide knowledge and access to its proprietary TITAN solution for next-generation sequence management, market analysis and genotype to phenotype association. DuPont business Pioneer Hi-Bred will have access to the platform for agricultural applications and will retain all intellectual property for its genetic information and crops produced as a result of the alliance, according to the companies.

“Pioneer’s sophisticated deployment of new sequencing technologies is bringing new value-added seed technologies to market faster,” said John Soper, vice president – Pioneer Crop Genetics Research and Development in a prepared statement. “Our work with sequencing the genes in corn plants is helping us improve the crop faster than ever. This alliance will help us bring those advancements to other crops faster, an important part of increasing farmer productivity to meet future demands in agriculture.”

The platform incorporates a number of methods, tools and technologies. DNA sequence analysis allows Pioneer scientists to better understand the structure and function of genes in plants and other living things. Recent improvements in sequencing technologies have increased the pace of sequence data accumulation by many orders of magnitude and new information platforms are essential to translate this accumulated data into knowledge, and then customer value. The Biotique platform also enables the efficient handling and analysis of the millions of DNA sequence data points generated by Pioneer through use of second and third generation sequencing technologies, according to the release.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.