For Immediate Release
San Diego, California (June 1, 2010) — Cibus, a pioneering plant trait development firm, today announced that Greg Gocal, PhD, Vice President of Research, has been invited to present at the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Plant Biotechnology (IAPB) to be held June 6-11in St. Louis. Dr. Gocal will discuss Cibus’ proprietary Rapid Trait Development System™ (RTDS®), which represents a viable alternative to transgenics. Dr. Gocal’s presentation titled “RTDS - a molecular spell checker for trait development,” will take place on June 9, at 3:30 p.m., during an oral symposium on Gene Expression/Stacking.
RTDS is an environmentally safe trait development procedure that uses a plant’s natural process of gene repair to effect a precise change in the genetic sequence. Unlike a transgenic approach, RDTS effects a precise change in the very same plant species being altered, thus avoiding introducing foreign genetic material from one plant species into another. RTDS has been recognized by the USDA as a mutagenesis technique, and an independent team of Belgian scientists published a report with the same conclusion in Environmental Biosafety Research (2009).
Dr. Gocal will be joined in the IAPB Symposia by Vipula Shukla, Dow AgroSciences LLC, USA, who will discuss “Targeted genome modification in plants: The ExZactTM precision technology platform. IAPB is held in conjunction with the 2010 In Vitro Biology Meeting of the Society for In Vitro Biology.
For more information about Dr. Gocal, visit www.cibus.com/who.php?name=Greg-Gocal. B-roll with footage of Cibus’s laboratory and greenhouse is available at www.cibus.com/broll.
For more information about the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Plant Biotechnology, visit http://www.iapb2010.org/.
Cibus® is a leading agricultural technology company that develops, and licenses gene edited plant traits to seed companies. Its traits enable farmers to manage productivity and sustainability challenges such as diseases, pests, weeds, fertilizer use and climate change. Cibus' goal is to use its trait technology to create a new generation of crops that are more adaptable to their environment and have increased yields while requiring less chemicals. Cibus' patented RTDS® technology platform has enabled agriculture's first standardized end-to-end gene editing trait prototype and production system: the Trait Machine™. The Trait Machine represents a technological breakthrough in plant breeding that broadens the range and scale of possible trait solutions that makes more diverse germplasm accessible, materially shortens trait breeding timelines, and shortens the time to market traits. Cibus' technologies and traits are accelerating agriculture's jump to a climate smart, more sustainable crop production system and the industry's move to sustainable lowcarbon ingredients.