Auckland, New Zealand
10 June 2003

Metahelix Life Sciences Private Limited, a Bangalore based agriculture biotechnology company, today announced the signing of a four year plant functional genomics research agreement with Vialactia Biosciences (NZ) Limited, a New Zealand based dairy biotechnology company

Metahelix Life Sciences Private Limited, a Bangalore based agricultural biotechnology company, today announced the signing of a four-year plant functional genomics research agreement with ViaLactia Biosciences (NZ) Limited, a New Zealand based dairy biotechnology company.

The programme will involve the functional validation of a large number of genes from pasture plants, potentially leading to improved plant varieties of pasture and crop plants.
Ryegrass, an important pasture grass, has been the subject of limited selective breeding pressure and therefore is a relatively wild species that could have important abiotic stress tolerant traits that rice and other cereals could greatly benefit from.

Vialactia and Metahelix intend to use the knowledge from ViaLactia’s ryegrass functional genomics program to develop commercial rice varieties in India through Dhaanya Seeds, a subsidiary seed production and marketing company of Metahelix. “ViaLactia will use the MetaHelix rice transformation system for lab based functional assignment of pasture plant genes,” says Dr. K.K.Naryanan, Managing Director of Metahelix.

The collaboration also emphasizes the importance of experimental functional validation of genes derived from genome sequencing efforts. “Functional genomics is an essential next step in discovery research. Without it, much of the data generated from sequencing cannot be used effectively, he says.

Metahelix Business Development Director Dr. Gautham Nadig says the relationship with ViaLactia is the first among a series of important moves that Metahelix has made to leverage its strong plant biotechnology platform.
“The collaboration will result in exciting new discoveries and holds tremendous promise and potential for the development of novel traits with direct relevance to India,” he says.

ViaLactia Chief Executive Dr Colin South says the company’s forage business is moving rapidly into the next stages of the research and commercialization programme. “Functional genomics is an important aspect of that and we believe this relationship with Metahelix Life Sciences is key to developing commercial value for ViaLactia.”

Metahelix Life Sciences has partnerships with seed companies and is focused on developing new and novel crop varieties using biotechnology. ViaLactia Biosciences is a biotechnology research and development company operating in the New Zealand dairy industry