AgroPages-Joyn Bio and NewLeaf Symbiotics Join Forces in $75M Deal-Agricultural news

NewLeaf Symbiotics and Joyn Bio recently announced a long-term partnership valued at up to $75M to bring innovation and sustainability to modern agriculture with a new class of microbes that benefit crop health and protection. Through this deal, Joyn, an ag-biotech company engineering microbes for more sustainable agriculture, will gain access to NewLeaf's extensive library of proprietary, highly-characterized strains of plant colonizing microbes. Joyn will engineer these microbes to bring novel disease and pest control options to farmers and reduce their reliance on chemicals.

"Partnering with NewLeaf's team of experts and technology is game-changing for Joyn Bio and our efforts to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in the agriculture industry. Our team at Joyn will now be better equipped to take these microbes to the next level of performance and ultimately into the field," said Mike Miille, CEO of Joyn Bio. "The potential to pair our platform for microbial engineering with NewLeaf's microbes will bring unprecedented performance to biological agriculture solutions."

Farmers are increasingly grappling with the realities of climate change and the need to feed a growing population, yet the agriculture industry lacks solutions that are cost-effective, high-performing and environmentally friendly. Together, NewLeaf and Joyn are poised to accelerate the widespread adoption of microbial solutions to minimize the industry's carbon footprint and broader environmental impact.

"The challenges farmers face daily require bold and novel solutions, and the community is eager for the next wave of agriculture innovation – and microbes are powerful engines for helping crops and farming businesses thrive," said Tom Laurita, CEO and co-founder of NewLeaf Symbiotics. "This collaboration with Joyn is a significant milestone for us and can lead to revolutionary advancements in sustainable agriculture."

NewLeaf has deep expertise and IP in genomics and production thanks to its platform, the Prescriptive Biologics™ Knowledgebase, combining nature and machine learning. This computational engine curates genotype and phenotype data and predicts the performance of microbes from the vast NewLeaf library. Joyn Bio brings deep expertise in crop science along with exclusive access to the genetic codebase and biological engineering foundries of Ginkgo Bioworks, the leader in organism design. Together, these companies will help define the future of agriculture.

This collaboration will reduce the time to market for Joyn's flagship nitrogen-fixing microbe by two to three years and will support the company's expansion into crop protection. Joyn will have an exclusive license to leverage select NewLeaf microbes for developing novel solutions that deliver a range of important benefits to plants, including nitrogen-fixation and crop protection capabilities. NewLeaf will receive an upfront payment and payments for achieved milestones throughout the agreement term.

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