Dow AgroSciences, Agdia announce license agreement

Dow AgroSciences LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, and Agdia announced an agreement to develop and commercialize a novel device that will fully automate the analysis of plants and seeds using immunoassay strips.

Each year, millions of immunoassay strips are used in agriculture and horticulture to detect the presence of a disease or a biotechnologically engineered trait present in a plant or seed. Agdia, a leading supplier of the immunoassay strips, was the first company to assemble individual strips into a multi-strip comb. The comb format has allowed customers to increase their through-put when using immunoassay strips, yet the reading, analysis and capture of data from the combs is completed manually. The manual process is time consuming and labor intensive.

To address the time and labor issues related to this process, Dow AgroSciences designed and patented a prototype device and software that automate the process.  In seconds, the new reader device captures an image of the comb, analyzes the image and stores the data automatically.  This is a break-through for the industry that will save time, reduce costs, and may increase the accuracy of the process by eliminating human error.

In the agreement, Dow AgroSciences has provided Agdia with an exclusive license to develop and sell a commercial reader device to the agricultural market. Agdia will also design and sell immunoassay combs that will be customized for use with the reader.

"Dow AgroSciences is proud to partner with another Indiana company to create innovation in the field of plant diagnostics,” says Daniel R. Kittle, global leader, Research & Development, Dow AgroSciences. “While it is exciting for Dow AgroSciences to invent this technology, manufacturing and selling a commercial reader is not aligned with our business strategy. Agdia was an obvious choice as a commercial partner because they are a global leader in plant diagnostics for agriculture.”

"When Agdia was approached by Dow AgroSciences regarding an automated strip reader, both companies recognized that this was a tremendous opportunity for two great Indiana companies to work together,” says Baziel Vrient, President of Agdia, Inc. “This partnership, reaffirms Dow AgroSciences and Agdia’s commitment and position as worldwide leaders to the agriculture community by offering the total solutions to a growing world.”

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.