CIBUS TO PARTICIPATE IN 2009 ASA-CSSA-SSSA
INTERNATIONAL GREEN ZONE
ATTENDEES CAN REVIEW THE BIOTECH START UP’S
PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY RTDS AT BOOTH #2027
San Diego, California
October 27, 2009
Cibus Global, a leading plant trait development technology company, today announced that it will participate in the 2009 International Annual Meetings for the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) and the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA). From November 1-5 in Pittsburgh, Pa., Cibus Global will be featured in the Green Zone Exhibition Area in the David Lawrence Convention Center.
Cibus Global will present its proprietary technology, Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™), at Booth #2027 in the Green Zone, a pavilion dedicated to renewable energy, biofuels and sustainable agriculture. Cibus representatives will highlight RTDS’s potential to help farmers grow plants with desired performance enhancement traits, including crop protection and disease tolerance. Developed by scientists at Cibus, RTDS is an all-natural, environmentally-safe "smart breeding tool" that helps farmers grow plants with traits that produce desired effects. RTDS derives its genetic traits from within the very same plant species being altered. The technology also holds promise for more environmentally friendly biofuels and other traits sought by the market.
“The ASA-CSSA-SSSA meetings will provide a great opportunity for us to showcase the revolutionary nature of the RTDS paradigm,” said James Radtke, Ph.D., Vice President, Product Development, Cibus. “More importantly, we will show that RTDS has already proven itself both in the lab and in the field. As Cibus Global moves into the final testing and seed production phases, we will also highlight the commercial viability of lines developed using RTDS.”
RTDS is a directed mutagenesis procedure that effects a precise change in the genetic sequence while the rest of the genome is left unaltered. By using RTDS technology, there is no integration of foreign genetic material, nor is any foreign genetic material left in the plant.
In September, Cibus announced a Strategic Development Alliance with Makhteshim-Agan (MAI). Under the agreement, MAI will invest up to $37 million over five years, based on certain milestones, in a Joint Venture with Cibus to develop proprietary crop traits in five major crops with a European focus. Under the terms of the Strategic Development Alliance, Cibus committed to developing proprietary performance enhancement traits for the Joint Venture that include both performance enhancement traits as well as crop protection product tolerance to a spectrum of crop protection products that MAI markets. These traits will be commercialized in high-performance seed lines in cooperation with leading seed companies and will allow MAI to participate in capturing the value of trait based crop protection.
Cibus Global is a privately held trait development company that produces crop traits for the agricultural community. Through the application of a proprietary technology called the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDSTM), CIBUS creates traits in a directed way with more precision than traditional breeding techniques and without the introduction of foreign genetic material. RTDS has proven itself in the laboratory with several different crops, as well as in initial field trials of CIBUS’ first commercial crop, canola. Further information on Cibus Global can be found on the Web at www.cibus.com.
RTDS technology produces changes within a plant species that could only occur in nature, but does so in a directed way. Thanks in part to recent developments in genome mapping, RTDS is significantly more precise and much faster than conventional plant breeding in the process of new trait development in plants.
RTDS, known as directed mutagenesis, works through the cell’s natural process of gene repair. Every time a cell copies DNA, it makes “scrivener” errors or spelling mistakes. These variations happen all the time, which is how natural variation occurs. CIBUS’ technology harnesses the cell’s own natural DNA repair machinery to correct such spelling mistakes, thus directing DNA repair enzymes to correct and repair the targeted gene in a specific way in order to produce a desired trait. This very precise process is similar to altering a single letter in a word contained within a large book.
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