Biodiesel Magazine
By Luke Geiver March 08, 2011
Monsanto Co. is entering the algae business after announcing a collaborative effort with Sapphire Energy to utilize Sapphire’s algae research abilities. Monsanto hopes to discover genes that could potentially increase crop yield or reduce crop stress in one of its core products, corn, cotton or soybeans. The new algae venture is a first for Monsanto, said Kelli Powers of Monsanto’s public affairs department. “For us, we have a pipeline and obviously that first step in our pipeline is discovery,” Powers said. “We see algae research that Sapphire is doing as a promising tool to screen genes early in that discovery process and to identify promising traits that could help with yield and stress.”
Read more