Page 88 - Innovation Delaware 2019

HAJIME SAKAI
JAMES C. COLLINS JR.
referring to the 19 years he was employed by DuPont Pioneer, most recently as head of genetic discovery and agronomic trait R&D, before leaving the company during a 2016 downsizing. “Some of the equipment we have here at the Innovation Space comes from my old labs.”
Sakai and three co-founders from California started Napigen after finding unique solutions for using the new CRISPR gene-editing technology in crop plants. “The other three
had full-time jobs,” Sakai laughs, “while I was getting over the shock of not having one. But we knew that CRISPR was not being used to edit mitochondria DNA, and we came up with an idea on how to do it.”
According to Sakai, there is an unmet need for hybrid crop plants that will raise yields to levels not previously achieved. “This is not a GM (genetically modified procedure), and it will be especially beneficial in wheat and other crop plants that are currently mostly non-hybrids,” he adds. “We had the Green Revolution” — which promoted the use of pesticides, fertilizers and specialty seeds — “and we think this will be the new revolution in yields.”
Sakai says Napigen has been getting helpful business advice locally as
well as help in applying for federal grants. “The Delaware BioScience Association has been doing various things for us at a discount,” he
says, noting that the company is now a finalist in an international competition awarded in association with the Delaware Sustainable Chemistry Alliance (DESCA).
“We’ve now completed our proof of
SCOTT PATEY
concept and are working on our dossier to register with the federal government,” Sakai says. “If all goes well, we will commercialize our wheat lines in around two years.” Already, the University of Delaware is providing greenhouse space for Napigen’s wheat test plots.
Why are Sakai and Napigen in Delaware when his partners are in the San Francisco Bay area? “Unless you already have a product, you get lost out there among all those companies,” he says. “Here, people are always willing to reach out.”
Another DuPont alumnus leaving his mark in the sector is Andrew Ragone, who was with DuPont for 35 years before starting Spekciton Biosciences in 2017. The company uses measurement science and technology to help farmers and scientists understand plant, water and soil health. It can also help detect early signs that plants are stressed or not viable.
Spekciton is addressing a pressing problem. “The productivity of our food system is at risk from climate change,” Ragone says. “There’s a lot of research going on to engineer crops to withstand stress. There’s a lot of energy around remediating contamination.”
At the University of Delaware,
plant science and engineering faculty and students are working together to create a range of robots that can do
crop evaluations that would be almost impossible for humans to perform. “The application of robotics and automation to precision agriculture brings up an array of interesting research problems
for us,” says Bert Tanner, a mechanical engineering professor.
For example, Tanner and James Adkins, associate scientist at the UD Cooperative Extension, are co-principal investigators on a seed grant from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources for a robotics project involving a platform of sensors mounted to an existing mobile irrigation system. The technologies include a surveying
AGRIBUSINESS
by the Numbers
$8
Billion
The estimated annual aggregate economic contribution made by agriculture to Delaware’s economy
No. 1
Delaware’s national ranking in the value of agricultural products sold per farm at $425,387
$3
Billion
Projected EBITDA for Corteva Agriscience’s first year of operation (2019)
$3.5
Million
Amount of a recent National Science Foundation grant that will allow the University of Delaware (in collaboration with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Stanford University) to study ways to improve crop resilience in the face of a changing climate
SOURCES: DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS SERVICE, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
86 DelawareBusinessTimes.com
RESEARCHERS WORK ON ROBOTIC
SOLUTIONS