Biotech Updates

Arcadia Biosciences and BGI to Create Rice Genetics Resource

December 9, 2015

Arcadia Biosciences has formed a collaboration with BGI to create a rice genetic resource library to advance food crop research and development. BGI and Arcadia will create, sequence and characterize millions of new gene alleles to advance rice breeding globally, focusing on 5,000 proprietary indica-type rice lines from Arcadia, and featuring high-density variation within the rice genome.

BGI will determine the genomic DNA sequences for all 5,000 lines, and make the assembled and analyzed data freely available online. BGI will also store the rice seeds and distribute the lines to researchers through its China National Gene Bank in exchange for users' study results on the lines available to the public. Arcadia will maintain the rights to any findings arising from the collaboration for use in its rice R&D programs, which include developing traits for nitrogen use efficiency and salinity tolerance.

For more details, read the news release from BGI.