Kingston, Ontario, Canada
December 16, 2011
Performance Plants Inc. (PPI), a leading global agricultural biotechnology company and Bayer CropScience AG. (Bayer) (Monheim, Germany), have entered into a research and commercial license agreement, giving Bayer exclusive rights for PPI's Heat & Drought Tolerance Technology (HDT™) in cotton. Bayer will leverage PPI's breakthrough HDT™ technology, which preserves yield by enhancing plants’ tolerance to heat, drought or combined stresses. HDT™ plants achieved significantly higher yields when faced with dry and hot periods at the yield determining stages of growth.
This is the second research and commercial agreement both companies have entered into with each other within the last two years. In 2009, Bayer licensed PPI’s innovative and leading Yield Protection Technology (YPT®) for their product development and commercialization of drought tolerant cotton. YPT® offers protection against yield losses sustained under suboptimal rainfall or irrigation without yield drag under well-watered growing conditions.
All PPI technologies target different mechanisms such as heat and drought tolerance, water use efficiency, seed yield improvement, and biomass enhancement. Due to this diverse range, PPI’s biotech traits can be combined or stacked into a single plant variety for genetic and agronomic improvements of all staple crops.
PPI recently signed a commercial license agreement with Biocentury Transgene (China) Co. Ltd. (Biocentury), giving the company exclusive rights for HDT™ to develop cotton plants with improved lint yield and quality in China. Coupled with the licensing agreement with Bayer, PPI has effectively expanded beyond its historic target markets of agri-food and biofuel into the consumer market sector.
PPI also signed a memorandum of understanding with Shaanxi Hybrid Rapeseed Research Center of China last month to co-develop high yielding rapeseeds. In July, 2011, PPI signed a commercial licensing agreement in corn and a four year R&D agreement in rice and soybean with a leading Chinese agricultural company, Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co. Ltd.. These agreements involve broad R&D collaboration and commercial application of multiple PPI technologies.
"At Performance Plants, we strive to be a leading developer and provider of superior ag-biotechnology traits for crop improvement world-wide. HDT™ is our new, ground-breaking genetic technology that assures crop yields under climate variability. I am pleased to see Bayer CropScience continue to adopt our technologies, and believe that these technologies will make significant impacts on enhancing their cotton quality and yield, especially in farm lands that frequently suffer heat and drought stresses,” said Dr. Yafan Huang, President & Chief Scientific Officer of PPI.
“We’re pleased to be extending our research collaboration with Performance Plants as a partner in developing the drought tolerance in cotton,” said Dr. Frank Schmidt, Head of Research BioScience for Bayer CropScience. “We anticipate that Performance Plants’ innovative technology will contribute to further strengthening our leadership position in the global cotton market, especially with regard to ensuring higher yields in difficult climatic conditions. Their technology fits well with our strategy to explore multiple approaches to drought tolerance in order to bring the most effective, high-performance trait solutions to market to help farmers tackle this global challenge.”
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