Marker assisted breeding partnership of Genetwister and Agribio Group
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Wageningen, The Netherlands
June 17, 2011
The Dutch Biotech company Genetwister Technologies B.V., and Agribio Group, consisting of leading flower breeding companies, signed a strategic alliance. Agribio is exploring the possibilities of marker assisted breeding for its crops to realize growth for their breeding companies and has decided to invest in the modern breeding technologies that Genetwister offers.
The experts of Genetwister, together with the specialists of Agribio will work on application of marker assisted breeding in the flower breeding programs of Agribio. Marker assisted breeding techniques have been applied in vegetable and bulk crops for several years, but only limited in flower breeding.
Introduction of these techniques will lead to faster development and more efficient production methods for the growers and varieties with even more variation in form, colour and scent for the consumers. Douwe de Boer, Managing Director of Genetwister, comments: “the dedicated shareholder Agribio will help us to strengthen our position in the field of applied genomic breeding and will help us to expand development in biotechnology and bio‐informatics skills that make Genetwister a leader in large scale data analyses. The resulting improved accuracy in breeding speeds up characterization of superior cultivars and allows for molecular identification of biochemical processes underlying traits that are relevant for breeding programs. Through this collaboration Agribio will be able to maintain and expand its successful position as a world leading ornamental breeding company”.
Genetwister Technologies B.V. is an innovative Dutch biotechnology company, with an international position in commercially applied biotechnology of agri‐ and horticultural crops. Genetwister is an expert in identification and isolation of molecular markers for genomic breeding, metabolic engineering and diagnostics using high throughput technology for sequencing, expression profiling and functional genomics. Genetwister’s bio‐informatics group develops proprietary software for database management, data‐analysis and data‐mining.
Agribio Group B.V. (‘Agribio’) is a group of companies active in flower breeding and potato breeding with total sales of approximately € 85 million and circa 2,400 employees. The flower breeding business consists of Fides in The Netherlands, Barberet & Blanc in Spain and Japan Agribio in Japan. The company is a global top‐3 player in vegetative breeding and propagation. The Agribio Group is active in 56 countries and trades over one billion strike cuttings per year The business has sales offices in the UK, USA, Colombia and Japan and production locations in Africa and Guatamala via acquisition of Oro Farms.
