The two companies have previously collaborated on next-generation seed technology. The new tie-up aims to leverage Ginkgo’s Ag Biologicals capabilities to optimise secondary metabolite production to create a ‘pioneering’ biological solution for Syngenta's go-to-market timeline.
To achieve this, Ginkgo will use its Ag Biologicals capabilities to calculate theoretical performance and guide rational strain engineering strategies to develop the microbial strain that is robust enough to meet Syngenta’s goals. Ginkgo will leverage its biological knowledge and machine learning approaches to develop insights from multiple complex data sources and apply this toward diagnosing strain performance limitations as well as biological feature discovery.
Syngenta said that by leveraging Ginkgo’s skills will allow it to speed development of its latest cost effective biological solution for large-scale production.
“Biologicals are increasingly important in addressing the need for efficient and sustainable agricultural solutions worldwide,” said Camilla Corsi, global head of research at Syngenta Crop Protection.
“At Syngenta, we are committed to providing farmers with greater complementary product and technology choices that promote sustainable agricultural practices.”
“We are excited to work with Ginkgo and are confident that their distinctive capabilities will enable us to achieve our productivity goals for our targeted molecule, expediting our time to market.”
Magalie Guilhabert, head of Ag Biologicals at Ginkgo Bioworks, said: “We are so excited to expand our relationship with Syngenta. We’ve built a successful relationship from our work together on plant traits and now look forward to doing the same with ag biologicals. Ginkgo is proud to put our excellent assets and experience against some of our customer’s toughest challenges. We’ll work to achieve productivity levels to realize commercial viability for Syngenta’s innovative ag biologicals product launch.”
Biologicals: Why collaboration is crucial
A desire for more sustainable practices in agriculture is driving interest in biological crop protection products. But the perception is that they are more costly to purchase, time-consuming to apply and less effective than the synthetic equivalents.
All the while, regulatory environments have failed to have kept up with developments in this nascent space,
By fostering collaboration, therefore, it is believed the agricultural biologicals industry can overcome current limitations, drive innovation, and ultimately provide more sustainable and effective solutions for farmers.
Syngenta and Ginkgo have history
The latest collaboration between Syngenta and Ginkgo builds upon their successful relationship of working on next-gen seed technology.
Ginkgo added other ag innovators are using its specialised R&D platform to take ag biologicals “to the next level and provide safe, efficacious, and consistent products for growers”.
Other collaborations include those with Agrivalle to make cutting-edge fertilizers and biocontrol agents, enabling them to sell and license products worldwide; OneOne Biosciences, to develop and commercialise OneOne’s nitrogen fixation microbial product, the "OneOne Multiplier" which amplifies microbes at the point of use, eliminating the need for costly and environmentally harmful pre-packaged solution; and Exacta Biosciences, which tapped Ginkgo’s fermentation optimization and formulation capabilities to drive down the cost of goods to develop its crop protection product, FitoRoot.
Ginkgo also recently acquired AgBiome’s platform assets and development pipeline. These assets will help accelerate Ginkgo’s development of AI models for biological R&D and help give ag biologicals customers a head-start on their product development efforts.
