BioConsortia expanding R&D labs with new California facility

BioConsortia, a microbial solutions company that improves plant phenotypes and increase crop yields with reduced chemical and fertilizer inputs, is announcing an expansion of its R&D laboratories and team with a new, state-of-the-art facility in Davis, California.

BioConsortia’s new facility is located at Cousteau Place in Davis, California, encompassing initially 15,000 square feet of laboratories and offices, and an additional 5,000 square feet of yet-unfurnished space for further expansion.

“The new and modern laboratories will provide the needed space and facilities for our growing R&D team and expanded platform, particularly in synthetic biology, microbiology and fermentation,” said BioConsortia Senior VP Operations & Administration Christina Huben in a news release. “This new facility has more than doubled BioConsortia’s operations space and positioned our company for future growth.”

Betsy Alford, Ph.D., from UC Davis and Andrew Phillips, Ph.D., from Bayer CropScience, join the BioConsortia team that is currently utilizing gene editing to develop the next generation of products for nitrogen fixation, yield enhancement and crop protection. The power of gene editing unleashes the natural power of microbials by enabling an over-expression of biocontrol metabolites or the continuous fixation of atmospheric nitrogen to help plants grow healthily and higher yielding with fewer conventional chemical inputs.

“It is a very exciting time at BioConsortia. The most recent hires to our world-class team of scientists further expand our expertise, and will accelerate our work in gene editing and genomics,” said BioConsortia CEO Marcus Meadows-Smith. “Our new laboratories provide the space needed to further our endeavors.”

“In December, we announced a major collaboration with Mosaic for the development and commercialization of our nitrogen fixing products. We have a pipeline of biopesticides and biostimulants in registration and partner evaluation phase.”

“We are delivering on our goal to support growers and sustainable agriculture by developing microbial products with higher consistency and superior efficacy,” Meadows-Smith said.

BioConsortia Inc. is developing effective microbial solutions that enhance plant phenotypes and increase crop yields. The company is pioneering the use of directed selection in identifying teams of microbes — working like plant breeders and selecting plants based on targeted characteristics, then isolating the associated microbial community.

BioConsortia’s unique, patented Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) process enriches the crop microbiome, allowing us to identify organisms that influence the expression of beneficial traits in plants. We use a powerful toolkit including multi-trait screening, colonization technologies, microbiome analysis, genomics, and gene editing. As a result, we have a remarkable hit rate of high quality leads, some with novel patent-pending metabolites and an extraordinarily deep pipeline of products in development.

The company is focused on launching products with superior efficacy, higher consistency and breakthrough technologies in three key areas:

• Biopesticides: a pipeline of biofungicides and nematicides with superior efficacy
• Biostimulants: growth promoting products that further increase yields in standard, high-yielding, as well as stressed, agronomic conditions
• Nitrogen-fixation and fertilizer use efficiency: developing products for major non-legume row crops (such as corn and wheat)

The products are foliar, drench, seed treatment, in-furrow and granule products for a wide range of crops.

For inquiries and further information, contact info@bioconsortia.com.

Photo at top: Bioconsortia’s new headquarters building.