Norwich, United Kingdom
July 20, 2009

The Sainsbury Laboratory, a world leading centre for plant disease research, is to join forces with the Two Blades Foundation (2Blades), a US-based charitable foundation that supports the development of disease resistant crops for agriculture worldwide. The collaboration between these two groups will ensure that the ground-breaking fundamental discoveries that come from the research groups in the Sainsbury Laboratory will be rapidly translated into practical solutions to assist farmers in all corners of the globe.

2Blades currently support research programmes in laboratories around the world, but the new partnership will see them operate an applied research program within the Sainsbury Laboratory, giving them access to the world-renowned expertise while enabling the Sainsbury Laboratory to expand its fundamental scientific research to support agriculture directly.

The collaboration will be announced at a reception at the International Congress of the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions in Quebec City on Monday 20th July. Speaking about the collaboration, Professor Sophien Kamoun said "There is already a close commonality between the activities of the 2Blades foundation and the goals of the Sainsbury Laboratory, and we are looking forward to attacking major crop disease problems together."

Website: http://www.2blades.org/

Published: July 20, 2009