AgBiome and Ginkgo Bioworks partner, optimize the performance of agricultural biologicals

AgBiome and Ginkgo Bioworks, a platform for cell programming and biosecurity, announced a partnership to optimize the performance of products in AgBiome’s pipeline of agricultural biologicals.

Organizations developing next generation agricultural inputs can access Ginkgo’s platform to accelerate discovery and deployment of new products. By leveraging Ginkgo’s ultra high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities, AgBiome aims to provide growers with new and improved live microbial strain products.

The biological crop protection market has grown in recent years as growers have increasingly sought effective and sustainable alternatives to synthetic pest control products.

“We believe we can identify improved variants at massive scale, which can help deliver more potent agricultural biologicals and bring the next generation of products to market. We are thrilled to work with an industry leader like AgBiome as we seek to optimize live microbial strain products in their pipeline and provide even better solutions to growers around the world,” Magalie Guilhabert, head of Ag Biologicals, Ginkgo Bioworks said.

“AgBiome is committed to creating the most effective crop protection products, and we are always looking for new technologies to enable better performance,” Scott Uknes, co-founder and co-CEO of AgBiome said. “We are excited to utilize Ginkgo’s capabilities in ultra high throughput assay development to evolve the next generation of biologicals as we continue to provide growers with improved product efficacy.”

AgBiome’s crop protection products are based on natural microbial strains that have undergone extensive testing and evaluation to ensure consistent performance. Ginkgo’s screening technology makes it possible to search through up to 1 million strain variants in a single run and select the best performing candidates for further development. Built on nanoliter encapsulation technology, Ginkgo’s screening capabilities provide nanoscale growth and assay compartments and make it possible to greatly reduce the screening time for large libraries.

For more information, visit ginkgobioworks.com and concentricbyginkgo.com.