Agrivida Partner With Syngenta For Low Cost Industrial Sugars

Agrivida, Inc. will collaborate with Syngenta Ventures to develop means to produce industrial sugars cheaply by using advanced crop technology. Syngenta will give Agrivida access to its technology in exchange for Agrivida equity.

Massachusetts-based Agrivida are specialists in developing non-food crop strains as biofuel or bioproduct feedstock. The agreement with Syngenta will boost Agrivida’s range of available technologies. The technologies licensed from Syngenta will be used to develop new traits for various crops. Agrivida aims to make next-generation bioproducts more affordable by significantly decreasing the cost of processing biomass, whether for non-food agricultural residues or dedicated biomass crops. This will ultimately be done by modifying the crops to optimize metabolic pathways so that the desired products are present in greater quantities and are easier to extract. Agrividia’s integrated approach to feedstock engineering involves adding genes for cell wall degrading enzymes that are expressed after harvesting; in combination with Syngenta technology this augments product development opportunities available to Agrividia.  

Agrivida's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mark Wong

“Agrivida is excited to be able to accelerate our product development through our relationship with Syngenta Ventures, the venture capital arm of Syngenta, one of the world's leading agribusiness companies. The combination of Agrivida's proprietary intein platform with Syngenta's technology will allow us to provide an integrated solution for feedstock and enzyme delivery to a wide range of industrial customers. Technologies developed through our collaboration will provide growers, processors, seed partners, and all members of the value chain with crops that enable cost-effective products from cellulosic biomass, and in turn helps to transform this emerging industry."

Agrivida's deal with Syngenta is the latest in a number of recent achievements for the company. In July, Agrivida announced breakthroughs in its development of sugar production from it’s enzyme-expressing crops at the annual BIO industry conference, which followed recent awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E) to further develop its technology platforms for sorghum and switchgrass.