Launched in February 2006, PhytaGro Inc is a prime example of leveraging knowledge gained for one purpose to develop new applications and markets elsewhere.

An 80:20 joint venture between AgResearch and US venture company Finistere Partners, PhytaGro's aim is to maximise "opportunities to take biotechnologies developed in forage and commercialise them into other crops such as soybeans, corn and alfalfa, as well as turf grass and ornamentals," says Dr Richard Curtis, AgResearch Commercial Team Leader for the Applied Biotechnologies Group.

"This will give us a greater return on our biotech research. Through the contacts we develop, it will also help us access plant biotech coming out of the US for use in our own research programmes."

PhytaGro gives AgResearch access to the expensive enabling technology licences needed to commercialise promising research ideas.

Initially, the focus is on four technologies:

1. PhytaGro has licensed RTDS™ which is a mutagenesis technology that allows specific mutations (conversions) to be made in plant chromosomes for trait improvements. Initially, we will use this technology to create herbicide tolerance in alfalfa, crops and cereals.
2. Our work on controlled flowering in forages has developed an inducible genetic switch that can control flowering in a wide range of plants. This knowledge has application for crops and ornamental plants, and could be used to induce flowering for a longer growing season or to synchronise flowering.
3. Our scientists have identified a compound from endophytes that acts as a feeding deterrent to insects. We are utilising a fungal natural product pathway by transferring the genes from the endophytes to plants, to develop new forms of resistance to sap-sucking insect pests, with application in crops such as corn, cotton and soybeans. This project has associated Capability Funding.
4. AgResearch Grasslands scientists have modified a protein involved in the formation of fatty-acid micelles in plants to increase their stability, which allows us to develop artificial oil bodies. These oil bodies have multiple uses, including delivery of vaccines for animal health, cosmetics for skin disorders and increasing the "energy content" of forages.