BASF Boosts Bioagriculture

Australia's biotechnology industry may be in for a big boost after a team from BASF, an international plant and chemical company, visited to find potential collaborative ventures.

In a five-day tour, the BASF team met with major research organisations and prominent Australian biotechnology researchers in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne.

BASF met with CSIRO, SARDI, various CRCs and companies such as Proteome Systems. Dr Sumita Chaudhuri, BASF's US-based project and business development leader, said the collaborations could be with public or private research groups in Australia.

"There are opportunities here that are unique and very cutting edge," she said.

BASF is a $US35 billion dollar chemical company based in Germany, with a significant presence in Europe and North America as well as other continents including Australia.

"The purpose of our trip was to look at all the opportunities from those that are involved in biotechnology all the way from development to commercialisation," Chaudhuri said.

"Overall, we were very pleased. We have been doing collaborative work on a small scale in Europe and US and it would be foolish not to explore opportunities here in Australia."

Chaudhuri said that it took BASF a couple of years to get things going, to know what it wants to do, where the gaps are, and where it wants synergies. Now the company is expanding its horizons, she said.

Preliminary assessments have identified work being conducted in Australia in several areas as being of interest to BASF. The company is improving yield, improving stress management (production), nematodes, and new tech tools - markers, promoters, enablers and transformation.

"Science is moving pretty fast and so I'm hoping within a year we will have set up some collaborations in Australia," Chaudhuri said.