INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Oct. 8, 2019 — Corteva Agriscience and MicroMGx today announced a collaboration that aims to provide farmers a wider range of novel, microbial-based crop protection products.
Under the agreement, MicroMGx will apply its metabologenomics platform to accelerate the identification of new natural product starting points. In a first for the agriculture industry, Corteva will use those starting points to discover and develop naturally derived crop protection solutions. Metabologenomics modernizes natural product discovery by fusing genomics and mass-spectrometry data in a way that facilitates more targeted molecule identification.
Farmers worldwide already rely on products developed by Corteva using spinosyns, active ingredients produced by naturally fermenting soil bacteria, to protect crops from insect damage. The newest of these is Inatreq™ active, a new active ingredient that helps control fungus in wheat and bananas.
“With 20-plus years of leadership in green chemistry, Corteva Agriscience has a long and successful track record of discovering natural and naturally derived products,” said Neal Gutterson, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Corteva Agriscience. “We are excited to collaborate with MicroMGx to explore novel approaches for speeding up the process of discovering the next generation of innovative crop protection solutions.”
“We believe in our platform’s potential to uncover impactful new crop-protection products. We’re enthusiastic to be partnering with Corteva Agriscience because of their strong portfolio of natural and naturally derived products,” said Anthony Goering, Chief Scientific Officer of MicroMGx.
MicroMGx part of a Midwest collaboration to bring exciting new technology to the world’s crop protection industry. Its metabologenomics platform was developed through a collaboration between research groups at Northwestern University’s Chemistry of Life Processes Institute and the University of Illinois’ Institute for Genomic Biology.
About MicroMGx, Inc.
MicroMGx, established in 2015, is a life sciences company dedicated to making high-throughput natural product discovery achievable. Through MicroMGx, pharmaceutical, animal health, and agriculture companies will have easy access to new natural products to fill their discovery pipelines. The MicroMGx laboratory is located at the University Technology Park at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Visit www.micromgx.com to learn more.
About Corteva Agriscience
Corteva Agriscience is a publicly traded, global pure-play agriculture company that provides farmers around the world with the most complete portfolio in the industry – including a balanced and diverse mix of seed, crop protection and digital solutions focused on maximizing productivity to enhance yield and profitability. With some of the most recognized brands in agriculture and an industry-leading product and technology pipeline well positioned to drive growth, the company is committed to working with stakeholders throughout the food system as it fulfills its promise to enrich the lives of those who produce and those who consume, ensuring progress for generations to come. Corteva Agriscience became an independent public company on June 1, 2019, and was previously the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont. More information can be found at www.corteva.com.
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Original press release issued on October 8, 2019 by Corteva Agriscience
MicroMGx cofounder Neil Kelleher is a faculty member of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute.