Dow AgroSciences, Radiant Genomics Announce R&D Collaboration Focused on Natural Products for Crop Protection

INDIANAPOLIS & EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company DOW, and Radiant Genomics today announced a research and development (R&D) collaboration agreement to discover novel natural products for application in crop protection products. The collaboration combines proprietary metagenomic and engineering-biology technologies from Radiant Genomics with Dow AgroSciences' industry-leading natural products discovery and product development capabilities to deliver new products from naturally derived chemistries.

Dow AgroSciences is an industry leader in discovering and commercializing natural and semi-synthetic crop protection products. For example, spinosad (Entrust^® SC Naturalyte^® Insect Control, Conserve^® SC speciality insecticide, Tracer^® insecticide, and Success^® Naturalyte^® Insect Control) and spinetoram (Radiant^® SC, Delegate^® WG, Exalt^™ SC, and Endure^™ insecticides) are two market-leading active ingredients in the spinosyns family of chemistry that are derived through fermentation and are important tools for controlling insects in many crops around the world.

"This collaboration will allow us to combine the expertise and capabilities within Dow AgroSciences with Radiant's proprietary technologies to accelerate our industry-recognized natural products discovery program, building on our commitment to sustainable solutions," said Daniel R. Kittle, Vice President of Research and Development at Dow AgroSciences.

The technology employed by Radiant Genomics will enhance Dow AgroSciences' natural product lead generation and optimization process. Working together, the combined expertise can help to bring new crop protection products to the market sooner.

"Radiant is delighted to be working with Dow AgroSciences and is looking forward to combining our leading-edge metagenomic natural product discovery platform with Dow AgroSciences' world-class expertise and infrastructure in search of novel crop protection products," said Dr. Jeffrey Kim, Chief Scientific Officer, Radiant Genomics, Inc.

About Dow AgroSciences

Dow AgroSciences discovers, develops, and brings to market crop protection and plant biotechnology solutions for the growing world. Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, Dow AgroSciences is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company and had annual global sales of $7.3 billion in 2014. Learn more at www.dowagro.com. Follow Dow AgroSciences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, or subscribe to our News Release RSS Feed.

About Radiant Genomics

Radiant Genomics, Inc. was founded in 2012 with the goal of integrating a range of novel technologies including large-scale sequencing, synthetic biology, bioinformatics, cloud computing, metabolic engineering, and high-throughput analytical chemistry to develop a robust industrial platform for natural product discovery, diversification, and production. Radiant Genomics utilizes this platform to develop products in numerous market categories including pharmaceuticals, agriculture, specialty chemicals, and nutraceuticals.

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