AgBiome and Tropical Melhoramento & Genética Collaborate to Develop Boll Weevil Resistant Cotton

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AgBiome^®, a leader in developing innovative products from the Earth's microbial communities, and Tropical Melhoramento e Genética (TMG), a Brazilian breeding company with state of the art breeding technologies for developing soy and cotton cultivars with high productive potential, announced today a new global R&D collaboration. The goal is to discover and develop traits with novel modes of action to combat the cotton boll weevil.

The partnership will pair AgBiome's successful Genesis™ platform with TMG's proprietary germplasm and Cotton Improvement Program to provide genetic solutions to farmers worldwide. With the adoption of these technologies, the number of pesticide applications for weevil control can be reduced, and grower value can increase significantly.

Brazil is one of the world's leading cotton producers and the second largest exporter of the fiber, with TMG contributing to 38% of the country's cotton seed market. Boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) is a serious pest of cotton, and is controlled mainly through heavy use of pesticides in Brazil and adjacent markets.

"In the United States, eradication of the cotton boll weevil has been fairly successful," said Dan Tomso, Chief Business Officer at AgBiome. "Internationally, and in countries like Brazil, the pest persists and is only controlled with multiple pesticide applications. We're excited to begin our work with TMG and hope to discover new solutions that are just as effective as today's pesticides."

"With this partnership, TMG looks forward to working with AgBiome to develop an innovative solution to the cotton boll weevil problem in Brazil," said Francisco Soares, CEO at TMG. "The complementary resources and capabilities that TMG and AgBiome bring into this partnership will deliver innovations paramount to the future success of cotton growers."

"Global partnerships are important to AgBiome's mission to provide responsible crop protection solutions to farmers worldwide," said Tracy Raines, Chief Innovation Officer at AgBiome. "This collaboration leverages the strengths of both organizations to develop a solution to mitigate such a devastating problem for cotton producers."

"TMG has a long history of delivering genetic solutions that contribute to the World demand for food and fiber in a sustainable way. This new research initiative is perfectly aligned with our strategy and shows the commitment that both companies have to bring the best alternatives to the growers." said Alexandre Garcia, Research Manager at TMG.

About AgBiome, Inc.
AgBiome^® partners with the microbial world to improve our planet. AgBiome discovers and develops innovative biological and trait products for crop protection. The proprietary GENESIS^™ discovery platform efficiently captures diverse, unique microbes for agriculturally relevant applications, and screens them with industry-best assays for insect, disease, and nematode control. Through its commercial subsidiary, AgBiome develops and sells proprietary crop protection solutions. The first of these, Howler^®, is a revolutionary fungicide for disease control in a broad variety of crops. AgBiome and Genective recently formed a strategic partnership to establish a new leader in insect traits, a market with over $5 billion in annual opportunities. AgBiome has a global R&D collaboration with Elanco Animal Health Incorporated, to develop nutritional health products for swine.  AgBiome's LifeEDIT^™ subsidiary deploys proprietary genome editing systems to address human genetic diseases and high-value crop traits. For more information, visit http://agbiome.com. 

About Tropical Melhoramento & Genética (TMG)
TMG (Tropical Melhoramento & Genética) is an independent soybean, cotton and corn breeding company based in Brazil, with state-of-the-art facilities that enable rapid development of new cultivars adapted to different locations in the globe. TMG is focused on developing high yielding cultivars with genetic technologies that improve plant health and profitability to the farmer. To learn more about the company and its cultivars, visit www.tmg.agr.br

SOURCE AgBiome

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