Western Australia
January 13, 2010
NemGenix Pty Ltd., Western Australia’s only genetically modified (GM) crop trait development company, has been awarded a $386,000 grant by the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research under its ‘Climate Ready’ funding program, which supports innovative solutions to climate change challenges.
NemGenix is one of only four grant recipients from WA in this fourth funding round and the only one nationwide to receive support to work on crop improvements.
NemGenix won its funding to work on drought tolerance in biofuel crops, with a focus on developing a GM crop trait that can be incorporated in sugarcane to provide resistance to plant parasitic nematodes. These small, thread-like organisms devastate root systems, dramatically limiting water and nutrient uptake and annually cause $167billion losses globally across all crop species.
Sugarcane, the world’s leading biofuel crop, is the focus of the NemGenix work, as it is highly susceptible to plant parasitic nematodes, with yield reductions of up to 20% recorded in Australia. Sugarcane also has particularly high water requirements, consuming as much as all of the world’s fruit and vegetable crops (WHO, 2005).
Commenting on the work, NemGenix Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Mike Jones, said that despite the enormous losses caused by plant parasitic nematodes, very little has been done to develop nematode resistant crops. Instead, agriculture has relied on control by highly toxic pesticides, or otherwise has just tolerated the losses.
“A healthy root system is essential for effective water and nutrient uptake. Without it the effects of reduced rainfall conditions associated with climate change will be far more severe,” Professor Jones said.
The NemGenix work uses state-of-the-art molecular technologies to tackle a devastating root pathogen in a way that can be applied to many other biofuel and food crops.
Commenting on the grant, NemGenix Chief Executive Officer, Dr Sean Hird, said the grant follows the NemGenix success last July with securing a major research and development contract with Dow AgroSciences and caps off a great year for the company.
“This last funding round under ‘Climate Ready’ had more applications than any previous round. This success reflects the growing recognition of our capabilities and the emergence of NemGenix as a leading Australian biotechnology company,” Dr Hird said.
BACKGROUND
Climate Change Funding Initiatives (www.ausindustry.gov.au/ClimateChange)
The Climate Ready Program was one of the three elements of the Clean Business Australia initiative. The other elements, which are continuing, are Re-Tooling for Climate Change and the Green Building Fund.
The Australian Government established Clean Business Australia as a partnership with Australian business and industry for tackling climate change. Clean Business Australia will support a range of activities aimed at improving our energy and water efficiency and increasing sustainability, with a focus on productivity and innovation.
The Climate Ready program was a competitive grants program providing grants from $50,000 up to $5m on a matching funding basis to support research and development, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation activities to develop solutions to climate change challenges. The fourth and final round of applications closed on 25 June 2009 and the award to NemGenix was made pursuant to that round.
NemGenix Pty Ltd (www.nemgenix.com)
NemGenix is a privately held agricultural biotechnology company working on the control of plant parasitic nematodes. The primary focus of the company is the development of genetically modified nematode resistant wheat and sugarcane, although its technologies and developments are capable of being applied across a wide range of crop species.
NemGenix is located at the WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (‘SABC’), which is situated on the Murdoch University research campus, and provides the company with full use of the SABC’s state-of-the-art facilities and equipment (www.SABC.murdoch.edu.au). The company also funds research at the University of Sydney and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.
NemGenix was founded by Dr Sean Hird and Professor Mike Jones in 2006 and secured $500,000 of venture capital investment in January 2008. In July 2009 the company announced a major multi-year collaboration with Dow AgroSciences (a division of Dow Chemical).
Dr Sean Hird has more than 15 years experience at Board level in the biotechnology sector and has been involved in raising over $120million from venture capital investors during that time. Dr Hird worked on the molecular biology of wheat during his Ph.D at Cambridge University and subsequently went on to train and qualify as a solicitor in the UK. He specialised in intellectual property law before taking-up in-house management positions in the biotechnology sector.
Professor Mike Jones is the Chief Scientific Officer of NemGenix and also the Director of the SABC and Professor of Agricultural Biotechnology at Murdoch University. He completed his undergraduate degree and postgraduate training at Cambridge University in plant science. With over 30 years research experience, he is one of Australia’s leading experts in agricultural biotechnology and an internationally recognised expert in the field of nematology.
Topics
Species
