Medford, Massachusetts, USA
June 5, 2012
Agrivida, Inc., announced at the National Corn Growers Association’s Corn Utilization and Technology Conference, that it has launched its first significant field production of research materials in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-permitted field trials. The update was provided by Michael Lanahan, Ph.D., today at the Conference in Indianapolis.
Materials from these trials, said Dr. Lanahan, will be used in larger-scale application trials to refine both field performance and processing characteristics of Agrivida modified feedstocks.
“Agrivida has created a proprietary INzyme™ molecular engineering technology that allows the renewable chemicals, fuels and other industries to grow a substrate of non-food energy crops that contain dormant enzymes, “said Dr. Lanahan. “These enzymes accumulate in the energy crop—which can be corn stover or other grains or plants—and are then activated during processing. This approach adds significant value by greatly reducing pretreatment energy and chemical costs normally associated with glucose conversion.”
Additional benefits, said Dr. Lanahan, include the ability to introduce plants with traits engineered for specific chemical processes; and the expansion of generation of cellulosic ethanol and other products within existing infrastructure.
“Agrivida’s first research plantings connote a major milestone in our scientific progress, and is an important step toward commercialization of modified feedstocks with high-performance, regulated enzymes essential for the manufacture of inexpensive sugars widely used in major industries,” said Michael Raab, Ph.D., President and Co-founder of Agrivida. “Agrivida was founded on that vision: that low-cost sugars, derived from non-food biomass, are critical to expanded production of renewable chemicals, fuels, and many other products worldwide.”
Agrivida's engineered energy crops and proprietary low temperature, low cost processes release over 80 percent theoretical glucose yield from cellulosic biomass, according to data presented in scientific forums.
Agrivida’s INzyme™ technology is compatible with virtually all processor technologies. Its downstream niche – facilitating energy- and chemical-efficient “de-construction” of cellulose to glucose through production of embedded dormant enzymes, which are then activated under specific post-harvest conditions-- means that these processes can greatly expand sugar production within existing infrastructure. INzyme™ technology can deliver sugar for industrial and agricultural uses (e.g., for animal feed) for approximately ten cents a pound, well below traditional sugar sources—a cost expected to drop even further in the future, according to Agrivida.
Dr. Lanahan has more than 15 years of plant research and business development experience at leading agricultural chemical and biotechnology companies, including Monsanto and Syngenta. At these companies, he led programs in enzyme development and enzyme expression in plants. His achievements include the development of corn-expressing amylase and phytase enzymes for use in ethanol production and animal feed. He holds a Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology from Washington University in St. Louis.
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