Test-tube farming: it's in the DAN: research triangle park's plant scientists breed success by lending mother nature a helping hand.

• Position: CASH CROP: AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY

When GrassRoots Biotechnology Inc. was spun out of plant-gene research conducted at Duke University in 2007, founders Philip Benfey and Doug Eisner knew there was only one place to set up shop: North Carolina's Research Triangle. "This area is the center of agricultural biotechnology for the world," says Eisner, chief operating officer of the Durham-based company. "It's the one area where we could get in a car and go to four of the six big multinational ag-biotech companies within 30 minutes."

It appears they made the right call. GrassRoots formed a partnership with St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. in .2009, building on a Monsanto discovery that finds the genes that help crops resist stress and increase yield. The two companies recently extended their partnership through January 2014.

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It's exactly the type of collaboration the North Carolina Biotechnology Center tries to encourage from its office in Research Triangle Park. "RTP is a center of excellence in the plant-biotechnology industry. That's why we've grown here," says Michiel van Lookeren Campagne, president of Syngenta Biotechnology Inc., one of the "big six" ag-biotechs and the first to open in the park. In addition to Monsanto and Syngenta Biotechnology--the U.S. research-and-development arm of Swiss seed-and crop-protection company Syngenta International AG--major ag-biotech companies in RTP include Bayer Crop-Science, a subsidiary of Germany-based Bayer AG, and BASF Crop Protection North America, part of Germany's BASF chemical company.

The industry sees itself as the answer to a looming global crisis. To support population growth, world food production must rise 70% by 2050, according to the United Nations. Most of the increase must come from improved crop yield and will involve more efficient use of fuel, fertilizer and water. Climate change will make drought tolerance more important as well.

In agricultural biotechnology, scientists adjust plants' genetic makeup by replacing sections of DNA with material from other organisms to, for example, stoke resistance to insects and disease or produce more grain per bushel. They're developing strains of high-yield. high-nutrition crops that grow well in places where they don't naturally thrive, as well as crops that can survive drought and excessive heat. Ag-biotechs have developed cotton, corn and soybeans resistant to Monsanto's weed-killer Roundup, enabling farmers to spray for weeds without hurting their crops.

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