Shareholding of Fraunhofer

Fraunhofer Venture

AgroProtect GmbH

The Company

AgroProtect GmbH 

AgroProtect GmbH, founded in the fall of 2010 as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Aachen, Germany, has developed a new platform technology making crop plants immune to fungi and bacteria. The applied principle allows for increasing the efficiency of the plant's endogenous defenses by at least a thousandfold. The company founder, Dr. Dieter Peschen, significantly contributed to the development of the fundamental technology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Aachen, Germany. As early as in 2004, Dr. Peschen was able to demonstrate the technology platform's functional principle using the example of a model plant (Peschen et al. 2004). Since then, he further developed the technology within his team to a level where it may now be implemented on an industrial scale. Since 2008, the project and the preparations for the company start-up have been financed by BMBF in the scope of the GO-Bio program with 2.0 million euros.

Technology

Research

The worldwide demand for food will have doubled by the year 2030. The most important reasons being an expanding world population and an increased consumption of high-quality foods. In addition, the demand for energy plants increases while, at the same time, the amount of agricultural areas around the world decreases due to urbanization. Thus, increasing the crop yield is the primary aim of agriculture in order to meet increasing demands. This may be achieved by developing and applying new pesticides and fertilizers. However, as the demand for sustainable, ecological and in particular economical farming is continuously growing, this cannot be the concept for the future. Green genetic engineering in contrast offers the possibility to generate and produce optimized crop plants in the near future while saving resources.

Genetically modified crop plants may, for example, be adapted to unfavorable climatic conditions such as arid or salty environments and also be equipped with resistances against diseases. This allows for developing new agricultural areas and achieving higher crop yields. Furthermore, the application of pesticides and fertilizers may be reduced considerably lowering the costs for production. The bacteria and fungus-resistant plants generated by the AgroProtect GmbH methodology also have the advantage that they are not mycotoxin contaminated and, thus, contribute to the health of animals and humans.

Agricultural diseases, in particular fungi and bacteria, are responsible for estimated annual losses of some 100 billion USD worldwide. AgroProtect GmbH, founded in the fall of 2010 as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Aachen, Germany, markets a new platform technology making crop plants immune to fungi and bacteria.

The patented AgroProtect resistance characteristics allow for increasing the efficiency of the plant's endogenous defenses by at least a thousandfold so that the plant itself has to produce merely very small amounts of it. The resources saved can be invested into growth and crop yield by the plant. The "proof of concept" has already been demonstrated in the model plant A. thaliana and is at present verified in a crop plant, the potato.