Mendel Biotechnology

Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. is a biotechnology company that says it aims "to produce plants enhanced for food, feed, fiber, energy and aesthetic benefit without large increases in production acreage" and says it is

dedicated to being a premier biotechnology company serving large agricultural companies with new genetic and chemical solutions and to becoming the leading seed company serving the bioenergy industry.

Its interests include developing "energy grasses" for biomass and biofuels. In its Annual Report of 2008 it lists as one of its achievements the establishment of "the first-ever field trials of genetically diverse Miscanthus varieties for biomass production in the United States".

Patents owned

As at July 2010, Mendel had been granted over 20 biotechnology and GM patents, as listed on its website.

Collaborators: Monsanto, Bayer, BP

Mendel's 2009 Annual Report names 2009 as a "watershed year", demonstrated by two collaborative partnerships: one with Monsanto and the other with Bayer CropScience. On its website, Mendel also names BP as a strategic partner.

Monsanto

On its website, Mendel names Monsanto as "Mendel's most important customer and collaborator for our technology business".

Mendel's collaboration with Monsanto goes back to 1997, the very year that Mendel was founded.

In Mendel's 2008 Annual Report it lists as one of its two lines of business that were central to its growth in that year a collaborative project with Monsanto on soybean yield, "the basis of which is a Mendel technology".

Mendel's deal with Monsanto involves Monsanto's "initial deployment of our [Mendel's] platforms" for its "improved yield soybean" (see "Mendel attempting to rescue low-yield Roundup Ready soy?").

Bayer

Mendel entered into collaboration with Bayer in early 2008. The deal involves "developing chemical products which make crops more resistant to biotic and abiotic stress factors, which in turn will stabilize yields and improve crop productivity".

Mendel says its program with Bayer "is a continuation of previous joint activities which focused on the elucidation of stress response mode of actions of Bayer agrochemicals like Imidacloprid and Trifloxystrobin". Imidacloprid is one of a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids which have been banned in Germany due to a suspected role in the mass worldwide die-off of bees. Mendel says, "The program aims to discover and develop further chemical products that regulate plant stress tolerance, leveraging Mendel's knowledge of plant transcription factor pathways with the expertise of Bayer CropScience as a leader in agricultural chemistry." It is unclear from this whether Mendel is helping Bayer dig itself deeper into the neonicotinoid hole or trying to come up with less risky alternatives.

BP

In June 2007 Mendel Biotechnology announced that it had entered into a collaboration with BP to develop biofeedstocks for the production of cellulosic biofuels.

An article reporting the deal added:

In addition to funding the five-year biofuels research program, BP will become a shareholder of Mendel with representation on Mendel’s Board.

Here is what Mendel's website says about the deal:

Mendel and BP entered into a strategic long-term collaboration in May 2007 for the development of a BioEnergy Seeds and Feedstocks business. The focus of the collaboration is the development and commercialization of seed products, both conventional and biotech varieties, for dedicated energy crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass. This business is intended to serve the emerging 2nd generation biofuels industry both in the United States and abroad.

Under the terms of the current agreement, Mendel owns the technology developed through the collaboration, Mendel owns and operates the seed and feedstock business, and BP receives royalties on seed sales.

The Jonathan Jones connection

British pro-GM scientist Jonathan Jones co-founded Mendel Biotechnology. His biography on the Two Blades Foundation website says:

Dr. Jones has co-founded 2 companies; Mendel Biotechnology, founded in 1997 to carry out genomics experiments to discover and exploit key regulators of crop productivity, and Norfolk Plant Sciences Ltd, to combine health promoting traits and disease resistance traits in potato and tomato. Dr. Jones was elected a Professor at the University of East Anglia in 1997, a member of EMBO in 1998, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003.

As well as being a co-founder of Mendel Biotechnology, Jones is also on its advisory board. Monsanto is an investor and collaborator in Mendel Biotechnology. Monsanto's vice president, biotechnology, Stephen Padgette, is listed as being on the advisory board of Mendel Biotechnology in its Annual Report 2008.

Mendel - and Jonathan Jones - attempting to rescue Monsanto's low-yield Roundup Ready soy?

GM soybeans have given consistently lower yields than non-GM equivalents. Analysing multiple US field trials in 1999, agronomist Dr Charles Benbrook found an average yield drag of 5.3% for Roundup Ready soy. In some locations, the best conventional varieties beat RR yields by more than 10%. Controlled comparative field trials of GM/non-GM soy suggested that 50% of the drop in yield was due to the genetic disruptive effect of the GM transformation process.

In what was arguably a tacit recognition of this fact, in 2009 Monsanto launched its Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans, which it called "the first product we developed simply to increase crop yield". Monsanto said a new gene in RR2 soy would give "a 6-7 percent yield increase" in yield. When stacked with other aspects of RR2 technology, the total yield increase was predicted by Monsanto to reach 7-11%.

Interestingly, the first figure of 6-7% yield gain is within the range of yield drag for first-generation RR soy quoted by agronomists in the above-mentioned studies. In other words, RR2 soy is hoped to compensate for the yield drag of RR1 soy, bringing yields all the way up... to that of conventional soy. The second figure of 7-11% would, at its higher end, slightly exceed the average yield of the non-GM soybeans that formed the controls in the yield studies mentioned above. That might justify to farmers the higher prices of GM soy seed, which have been the target of much criticism.

Monsanto credits Mendel Biotechnology with discovering the magic gene that is meant to deliver these yield increases for its RR2 soybeans. The chemicals company BASF is a second collaborator.

However, in 2010, just one year after the release of RR2 Yield soybeans, reports have emerged that they are not giving the promised higher yields. In July 2010 it was announced that West Virginia’s attorney general had launched a probe into Monsanto under consumer fraud laws over its claim that RR2 soybeans would give farmers higher yields.

According to a Bloomberg report, Monsanto last year began shifting growers to the new seeds by promising a 7 percent to 11 percent bigger harvest compared with the original Roundup Ready soybean seeds:

Roundup Ready 2 soybeans were planted on 1.5 million acres last year and cost growers $74 an acre, 42 percent more than the older product, Bloomberg said.

But according to West Virginia Attorney General Darrell V. McGraw, Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, a farmer group and investment researcher OTR Global found the latest seeds failed to deliver what Monsanto promised.

Government surveys show the yield on soybean farms in West Virginia was 41 bushels an acre in 2009, the same as in 2008, the Journal said. McGraw offered Monsanto a chance to meet with state officials before he begins litigation.

“My office is concerned that West Virginia farmers are paying much higher prices for soybeans with the Roundup Ready 2 trait when the yields do not live up to the claims and do not justify the increased prices,” McGraw wrote.

In the face of this reported dismal failure of a Mendel/Monsanto GM technology, Mendel co-founder and advisory board member Jonathan Jones, who has an interest in the success or failure of both companies, published an article on the BBC website, praising Monsanto and hyping GM technology as a high-yield "solution" to the food and energy crises (see Jonathan Jones, section, "Promoting GM on BBC website - vested interests undeclared").

Affiliations

As at June 2010, Mendel's "strategic partners" are:

• Monsanto. Mendel calls Monsanto its "most important customer and collaborator for our technology business".
• BP
• Bayer CropScience
• Selecta Klemm: a joint venture formed in 2006 — Ornamental Biosciences, Inc. — for the commercialization of ornamental crop varieties differentiated in the marketplace for improved growth and survival under a range of stresses.
• SweTree Technologies: a collaboration for the development of improved varieties of plantation forest tree species.
• ArborGen: a collaboration to improve stress tolerance in selected tree species.

People

As of July 2010:

• Neal Gutterson PhD - president and CEO

Scientific advisory board

As of June 2010:

• Dr. Elliot Meyerowitz
• Dr. Jonathan Jones
• Dr. Brian Staskawicz
• Dr. Fred Ausubel
• Dr. Ulrich Schirmer
• Dr. Andrew Millar
• Dr. Joseph R. Ecker
• Dr. Andrew H. Paterson
• Dr. Charles Wyman

Contact

As at July 2010:

Address: Mendel Biotechnology, 3935 Point Eden Way, Hayward, CA 94545

Phone 510-264-0280

Fax 510-264-0254

http://www.Mendelbio.com