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GM crop breakthrough threat to Monsanto

A San Diego company will on Thursday unveil a technology that can deliver the benefits of genetic modification without inserting foreign genes into a crop in move that could transform the multibillion dollar agricultural biotech market.

Cibus, which has been funded quietly for several years by a group of biotechnology investors in the US, believes there is huge potential in its non-transgenic technology for introducing "traits" such as herbicide resistance into plants.

It will be particularly appealing in regions such as Europe, where strong political and environmental opposition has blocked the introduction of GM crops.

But Stephen Evans-Freke, the company's chairman, expects Cibus also to prosper in countries such as the US where farmers have embraced GM.

Its Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS) will provide a less expensive alternative to GM seeds, he says.

The global market for GM seeds and traits is growing by about 10 per cent a year and will be worth $6.15bn in 2006, according to Cropnosis, the Edinburgh-based consultancy.

Mr Evans-Freke - one of the best-known US biotech entrepreneurs - makes clear that Cibus will be gunning commercially for Monsanto, bête noire of environmental campaigners, whose herbicide-resistant crops dominate the GM business.

Such products enable farmers to kill weeds by spraying with a particular herbicide such as Monsanto's Roundup, without harming the crop.

Today's debut announcement concerns a relatively minor crop, sorghum, which has had a low priority for GM seed companies. Cibus will collaborate with the US National Grain Sorghum Producers Foundation to develop new traits for the cereal.

Cibus - named after the Latin word for food - expects to hit the herbicide-resistant seed market with canola (oilseed rape) next year and rice in 2008.

The RTDS technology uses the plant's own genetic machinery to change its DNA, through a process known as site-directed mutagenesis.

This is standard practice for bacteria but Cibus is the first company to develop a fast and reliable way of applying it to plants.

"Essentially they are directing and greatly speeding up natural selection," says Guy Cardineau, a professor at ArizonaState University.

He is one of several independent plant scientists who have evaluated RTDS and are enthusiastic about its potential.

Mr Evans-Freke says a group of private investors have spent $20m - $30m over the past six years, funding a team of about 20 scientists at Cibus.

"We kept very quiet until we had secured our intellectual property and obtained robust proof of principle for the technology across two major crops," he says.

By Clive Cookson

Copyright The Financial Times Ltd.

via checkbiotech, Nov 16, 2006