Today, at the international conference for agribusinesses, investors, and tech companies known as AgTech Nexus USA, NewLeaf Symbiotics and Joyn Bio is unveiling a long-term partnership valued at up to $75 million 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,” 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.
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 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.
