Fluidigm will supply integrated fluidic circuits (IFCs) and instrumentation to Bayer Cropscience's global operations after the two companies signed a multi-year agreement.
Bayer Cropscience will be using Fluidigm technology to conduct marker-assisted breeding, genetic analysis in its molecular breeding programme and quality control on its vegetable seeds.
While many seed producers are using molecular breeding techniques, the capacity of the available test systems has been limited.
Fluidigm's technology increases output more than ten-fold and reduces the cost-per-data point to a mere fraction obtainable with standard 384 well plates for 'high-throughput' genotyping.
Fluidigm provides molecular breeders with Biomark and EP1 systems, along with Fluidigm's microfluidic-based Dynamic Array IFCs to provide superior data quality, a fast and easy workflow, and significantly higher throughput and cost savings for high-throughput SNP genotyping studies.
Traditionally in a breeding experiment, new crops had to be grown, traits selected, plants cross-bred, and then seeds grown again to maturity to check the results.
After each cross-breeding, the perfect plant had to be identified out of many thousands that had been bred with exactly the same desired characteristics.
This research could easily spread over years or even decades.
With molecular breeding techniques, breeders are now able to dramatically decrease cost and timelines to select the best seeds for the market place.
