Kingston plant breeder poised to expand

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

by MARY BAXTER

David Dennis, president and chief executive officer of Performance Plants, said details about the facility and its location would be released in early April.

Dennis referred to the new facility following an announcement that his company had established a partnership with Syngenta to introduce a gene that will enable field crops such as corn and canola to better withstand the effects of drought.

Performance Plants holds the patent on the gene.

The company has tested the trait in canola crops at its research facility in Saskatchewan and while results varied, it consistently outperformed those without the modification, Dennis said.

The company’s main focus is on breeding for yield improvement and stress tolerance for grains and oilseed as well as ornamental and turf grass crops and improved quality for energy crops.

In a presentation to Syngenta-affiliated dealers here on Wednesday, Dennis predicted agricultural technology such as genetic modification would be an important tool to ensure food and fuel supplies while facing challenges such as wide-scale starvation, greater weather fluctuations because of climate change, drought, and the depletion of the world’s aquifers.

“Water shortage I think is the biggest problem we’re dealing with at the present time,” he said.

Dave Sippell, president of Syngenta Seeds Canada observed that his company’s access to growing plots all over the world is helping to speed the commercialization of this technology: “we’re getting more generations per year in plant breeding cycles.”

While approaches to keeping crop threats at bay are becoming more sophisticated, Dirk Benson, a U.S.-based Syngenta researcher, emphasized the need for continued crop development. “It is our job as an industry to get [customers] application routines, rotate them [the products] over time so they [weeds and pests] do not develop resistance,” he said. BF