NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Genetics-focused agriculture company Biogemma said today that it will use Roche NimbleGen's Sequence Capture technology in a research collaboration.
The co-development partnership is aimed at developing new technologies for Biogemma’s crop plant-breeding programs. The focus will be on polyploidy plant genomes such as wheat and canola.
Using the Sequence Capture complexity reduction technology will help Biogemma target unique genetic variations associated with genes that will be useful to crop breeders, said Roche NimbleGen. The partnership also will employ recent optimizations of the Sequence Capture technology for 454’s GS FLX Titanium series.
“Wheat and canola are very valuable crops for our seed business shareholders and, due to their genome structure, remain very challenging to develop efficient molecular markers on a larger scale,” Biogemma CEO Pascual Perez said in a statement.
Perez added that the agreement will assist in “development of numerous genetic markers linked to important traits,” and it will help Biogemma customers “speed their breeding programs and reduce their time to market, both of which will have a significant impact on agriculture.”
Financial terms of the agreement were not released.