Plant Breeding Company Plans Herbicide-Tolerant Sorghum
By Stephen Clapp
Published: February 5, 2007 (Food Chemical News)
Cibus LLD, a San Diego-based plant breeding company, on Jan. 31 announced a collaboration with the National Grain Sorghum Producers Foundation and Valent U.S.A. Corporation to develop a nontransgenic herbicide-tolerant grain sorghum variety.
Cibus’s Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS) promises to replicate the attributes of certain biotech crops without the introduction of foreign genetic material (see FCN Nov. 27, Page 5).
“Valent brings its expertise in herbicide development and management to an alliance between Cibus and NGSPF,” the partners said in a news release. “The collaboration pioneers a new standard for providing valuable traits to farmers while avoiding the unknown and potentially unintended consequences associated with GMO crops.”
Cibus said its RTDS technology would provide high tolerance levels to Valent’s leading post-emergence grass herbicide brand, Select Max® Herbicide with Inside Technology. The new variety “will significantly enhance the productivity and profitability of sorghum farming operations,” the companies forecast.
“With both Valent and Cibus’ missions to provide innovative and sustainable technologies to the agribusiness community, this collaboration will benefit growers and be a natural fit for us,” said Valent U.S.A. president Trevor Thorley. “Cibus’ proven technology opens new doors for all parties, and will help growers more easily produce safe and abundant food. Given the global reach of Valent’s parent company, Sumitomo Chemical Company, Ltd., a world leader in the discovery of crop protection and plant enhancement products, we look forward to exploring opportunities with Cibus for other crops around the world.”
“RTDS promises a revolution in genetics — a limitless range of value added new products that are acceptable to environmentally-conscious consumers and governments, and help farmers solve their toughest pest management problems,” said Cibus president Keith Walker. “RTDS technology can be used to create non-GMO plants tolerant to most herbicide chemistries currently marketed to farmers, such as a Select Max® tolerant grain sorghum. But the opportunities also include healthier oils and nutraceutical oils in crops such as canola and soybeans plus many other valuable traits.”
Walker declined to speculate on future projects to be undertaken by his company and its partners, but he reported that agribusiness has numerous “weed control needs” that overlap with Sumitomo’s line of grass-control herbicides. “We’re interested and they’re interested in expanding the agenda to other opportunities,” he told Food Chemical News, stressing Sumitomo’s “global reach.”
Taking a broader view, Walker said, “As we learn more about gene structure and function, we see that small SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms] are indeed what make genes operate differently. As the days go by, we find potential new areas for application. However, we want to make sure we do a quality job of the rabbit we’re chasing [herbicideresistant sorghum]. In the next five or six years, agriculture will be an interesting place to be.”
