Avesthagen in pact with French seed firm

Bangalore-based biotech firm Avesthagen has entered into a strategic alliance with a French seed company, Group Limagrain (Limagrain).

The companies will float a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to jointly develop a seed business unit in India.

This will help market the improved plant varieties developed in collaborative R&D programmes aimed to develop agrotechnologies that can add value to the seed and food products.

Announcing this alliance on Thursday, Villoo Morawala Patell, founder and CEO, Avesthagen said that Groupe Limagrain is a farmers' co-operative and has the interests of farmers at heart which is what has attracted Avesthagen.

"The alliance is a long-term agreement between Avesthagen and Limagrain, in which resources, knowledge and capabilities will be shared with the objective of enhancing each other's competitive position," she noted.

"The move to establishing this alliance will allow Limagrain to strengthen its position in the Indian market and various technology platforms along with intellectual property from Avesthagen. In turn Avesthagen will have access to Limagrain's expertise regarding elite germplasm breeding and global seed marketing," she added.

Alliances are becoming important in agriculture industry to bridge the gap between the field experience and emerging technologies. To fill the gap larger seed companies need to increase research productivity and biotech companies are representing one of the major sources of this cutting edge research.

Limagrain has also shown interests to introduce innovative plant varieties, including transgenic ones, for the Indian markets. Avesthagen will also work closely with Limagrain, its subsidiaries and partners to conduct research programs to develop novel seed varieties and to take them to farmers through the SPV.

Limagrain is based near Clermont-Ferrand, France, and operating through subsidiaries in more than 30 countries, has revenue of more than euro 1 billion and spends annually more than euro 100 millions in research and development (R&D).

Limagrain through its various group firms, is the fourth largest seed group globally having established presence in vegetable seed, home garden seed products. It also has presence in cereals ingredients and functional cereal flours.

"It is this symbiotic relationship that fuels an increasing number of opportunities. Pursuit of creative collaboration and partnership is a key requirement to success," said Patell.

Daniel Cheron, deputy CEO of Groupe Limagrain said, "With this global alliance, we will have opportunities to speed up the development of new potential for growth already engaged in India by our subsidiaries. It will furthermore bring opportunities to operate collaborative research and development (R&D) programmes in biotechs, especially related to genetically modified organisms field plant trials. It will also provide development opportunities for Group Limagrain Ingredients division."

As farmers are facing a limited choice of new seed traits, seed companies are looking forward to developing projects that are required to supplement their product pipelines.

Avesthagen's late-stage projects including Hybrid-Fit technology, abiotic stress tolerance, and enhanced nutrition project which will play a vital role to bridge the gap.