Partnerships among companies in the St. Louis area were spotlighted during the AgTech NEXT 2022, Reinventing a Food System in Crisis, conference Oct. 11-13 at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO.
One such partnership has occurred through the development of CoverCress, which was founded in 2013 to advance pennycress, a winter weed as non-food, non-feed agricultural feedstock for the production of renewable fuels, President and CEO Mike DeCamp says.
Through techniques such as traditional breeding and advanced gene editing, DeCamp explains work has been done in the past 10 years to convert pennycress into a new crop now known as CoverCress.
Bayer, which was one of the first investors in the company, acquired a controlling interest in CoverCress this summer. Other owners in the company are among the largest players in their respective sectors, putting CoverCress in a unique position, DeCamp says. READ MORE