Origin Agritech has entered into a collaboration agreement with the Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) of the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences (CAAS) to expand their collaboration in GM soybean research and commercialisation. In addition to the glyphosate tolerance G2-epsps gene, which was developed by BRI, with Origin holding the global exclusive commercial rights in maize, soybean and other major crops, Origin and BRI will expand their collaboration to develop dicamba tolerant, drought tolerant, and salt-alkaline tolerant GM soybean varieties by using three newly developed and patented genes from BRI.

The new collaboration agreement will strengthen Origin’s existing relationship with BRI, with the two institutions having previously established a collaboration aimed at accelerating the commercialisation process of double stacked maize products with insect resistance and glyphosate tolerance traits in China (see AgbioNews Aug 29, 2019).