"Fluidigm is delighted to be a global supplier to Bayer CropScience. Our technology is perfectly suited to help them develop and take-to-market the highest-quality seeds for field and vegetable crops," said Gajus Worthington, president and chief executive officer of Fluidigm. "We are committed to helping Bayer CropScience meet the ever-increasing demands for high-quality food supplies throughout the world."
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. "Until recently, breeders throughout the world could only dream of such a technique, yet now Fluidigm is making this a reality," Worthington explained.
Fluidigm provides molecular breeders with BioMarkTM and EP1TM systems, along with Fluidigm's microfluidic-based Dynamic ArrayTM 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.
Fluidigm develops, manufactures and markets proprietary Integrated Fluidic Circuit (IFC) systems that significantly improve productivity in life science research. Fluidigm's IFCs enable the simultaneous performance of thousands of sophisticated biochemical measurements in extremely minute volumes. These "integrated circuits for biology" are made possible by miniaturising and integrating liquid handling components on a single microfluidic device (IFC). Fluidigm's systems, consisting of instrumentation, software and single-use chips, increase throughput, decrease costs and enhance sensitivity compared to conventional laboratory systems. Fluidigm products have not been cleared or approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as a diagnostic and are only available for research use. For more information, please visit www.fluidigm.com.
