NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – DuPont Pioneer and Hexima today announced an alliance aimed at the transgenic protection and improved yields of crops such as soybean, cotton, rice, and corn.
Hexima is based in Australia and develops gene technologies to enhance the productivity of farmers.
In one multi-year agreement focused on insect protection gene discovery, DuPont Pioneer gains the exclusive rights to commercially develop traits using genes discovered as part of a program leveraging its knowledge in characterizing novel insect actives and Hexima's expertise in biochemistry and insect biology.
"Hexima's excellent biochemical expertise combined with [its] access to Southern Hemisphere biodiversity represents a unique opportunity to discover new classes of insect actives," Gusui Wu, Dupont Pioneer senior research director, said in a statement.
The company said the global market for transgenic insect protection traits in 2012 was estimated at $6.5 billion.
In a second deal, DuPont Pioneer has been given a license to Hexima's Multi-Gene Expression Vehicle technology, which delivers several proteins to a plant from a single transformation event. DuPont Pioneer will be able to use the technology with leads resulting from its collaboration with Hexima and from its own programs.
Financial and other terms of the deals were not disclosed.