Arcadia Biosciences Inc
We, a corporation formed in 2002, are an agricultural biotechnology trait company
engaged in the development of traits that improve food, feed and fiber crops
and enhance the value of the resulting agricultural products. Our customers
include seed companies who incorporate these traits into their elite varieties
to increase the value of a crop for farmers, as well as food and feed companies
who make products that increase the choices and nutritional value of foods for
consumers.
We are focused on two distinct areas of the agricultural supply chain:
Improvement of crop yield by mitigating the impacts of abiotic stresses such
as drought, heat, nutrient deficiency, water scarcity, and soil salinity. These
stresses are prevalent in most agricultural environments with varying degrees
of severity and often have material consequences on crop production, quality,
and farmer incomes. Our traits have been introgressed into several crops, including
rice, wheat, and soybeans, and we have demonstrated significant yield improvements
in multiple years of field testing. In addition to improving the efficiency
of agricultural productions, these traits also have the potential of reducing
the impact of agriculture on the environment by lowering water requirements
and reducing the occurrence of excess nitrogen runoff from intensive farming.
Enhancement of the nutritional quality of crops by changing the compositional
quality of oilseeds and grains. We currently produce and market the SONOVA®
brand of oil containing Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA), an omega-6 fatty acid derived
from safflower. We recently received GRAS notification (generally recognized
as safe) from the FDA for use of SONOVA GLA safflower oil in medical foods and
nutritional beverages, which we expect will expand the market for this product.
In addition, we are in late stage development of Resistant Starch (RS) wheat,
a product with twice as much fiber content as conventional wheat. This and other
wheat quality products in our pipeline are being developed using our non-transgenic
TILLING technology platform.
Our business model is to access trait technologies that have already achieved
proof of concept whether in a public research program or with commercial partners.
We further develop these technologies by optimizing their function and validating
their performance through intensive field trial testing in multiple crops under
varying growth conditions, thereby better establishing commercial viability
for resulting products. We then license our technologies to major seed and consumer
product companies who perform additional testing and product development and,
where needed, generate the requisite data to support regulatory submissions
and approvals. License agreements with our partners may include financial and
non-financial milestones. When products containing our traits are commercialized
we will receive a share of the revenue. In select instances, we also work with
our commercial partners to make the regulatory filings required to support commercial
launch of the traits in order to increase our share of the revenue.
We use both genetically modified, or GM, and non-GM technologies to develop
our traits. This approach allows us to select the most appropriate technology
for development of a particular trait, crop and market. However, a key component
of the development cycle of GM traits is that U.S., or in some instances, global
deregulation of the trait by one or more regulatory agencies may be required.
As there continues to be a significant debate about the role of GM traits in
agricultural crops, we have seen this issue begin to impact some regulatory
agencies which exercise control over the pace of deregulation of products, thereby
allowing commercialization. We have recently experienced delays in the review
of many of our high value traits principally due to inaction from these government
regulatory authorities. For example, in India, where regulators have not approved
field trials for testing of GM traits for the last two years, we estimate the
impact to trait development and crop commercialization timelines of our license
partner in India, Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company Ltd. (“Mahyco”),
could be at least two to three year delay.