b'stantial progress towards commercializing and safeguarding its IP around BioTags. Its grown to a team of 17 and is in the process of building a large head office in the Greater Toronto Area.Most recently, the company is completing commercial trials in seed. What you see in the Seed is sort of our beachhead, you could say. Were seeingmusic industry is digital some pretty terrific results in terms of our seed trials right now and were preparing for rapid growth, Borg says. rights management as Thats because seed companies need and want to protect their IP. By incorporating BioTags into a seed treatment, seed canan attempt at mitigating literally be coated with a fingerprint allowing it to be easily andor reducing piracy. This cheaply identified by virtually any seed lab anywhere in the world.Industry requires a robust solution that can persist despiteis a similar solution, but the absence of packaging or despite seed changing hands, Borgfor the biological world. notes. BioTags act as a microscopic fingerprint that securely links a seed to supply chain data, and together with the Index Michael Borgcustomer portal, this solution enables true supply chain digitiza-tion and provides reliable product identification, according to the company.It works like this: each BioTag is created with a custom-designed sequence that is bioengineered into bakers yeast. No actual gene modification of the yeast takes place, which isWhy Does Seed Fraud Matter?extremely important when it comes to international regulations,Why should you care about pirated goods in the long run? he adds. Currently, trade in counterfeit and pirated goods is estimated to We store these unique BioTag sequences in our customerbe about $1.8 trillion a year, according to J.J. Saul, an intellectual portal, and they can be linked to owners and various supplyproperty expert with Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. chain data. The customer portal can be easily integrated with aIts a huge industry, and its the largest criminal enterprise seed companys existing traceability systems. We then grow thein the world, Saul said in a Seed World webinar. Its not only BioTag batch just like any yeast product, and the batch is inacti- problematic for that criminal elementit also undermines a lot vated and dried. Its basically a powder product and our stabilityof legitimate businesses.studies have shown it is shelf stable for two years, but were likelyAnd while its a huge industry, its difficult to regulate and stop going to see closer to four years of shelf stability. itits expensive to investigate ethe activity and identify whos When incorporated into a seed treatment or seed coating,exactly behind it and enforcing rights against multiple jurisdic-the yeast doesnt affect the formulation in any way, Borg says. Ittions is a tedious process. can be applied in trace amounts to virtually any seed treatmentIts no different in the seed industry, where the industry in and seed. the U.S. has been stunned not once, but twice by the news of Were talking dosages that work at as low as parts per billion,germplasm theft by Chinese nationalsfirst of corn germplasm but we have an opportunity to apply at higher dosages as well,in 2014 and second with rice germplasm in 2018. Borg says. Seed piracy can have a huge impact on the ability to invest Detection can be achieved using PCR technology, which isin new innovations, James Weatherly, founder of Weatherly used in seed labs all over the world, making BioTags a globallyIP Solutions, said in a column. Its estimated that the theft of accessible technology. corn germplasm in Iowa cost researchers five to eight years of We believe BioTags have the potential to almost eradicateresearch and in the range of $30 to $40 million, while the rice illegal seed practices. They not only provide brands with securegermplasm theft was estimate to have cost the owners $3 to $18 on-product evidence regarding permitted use, but the meremillion in research investment.existence of a BioTagged seed will deter malicious actors fromIt also can encourage other practices that violate intellectual illicit acts. You have a level of sophisticated security, and theproperty, such as brown bagging and seed saving, which has big mere knowledge of it by stakeholders imposes self-regulationimpacts on the industry. on illicit acts. How can you actually get away with it, now thatWeatherly notes about 5% of soybean production in the U.S. [BioTags] exist, Borg says. is saved or brown bagged seed and costs the industry $1.72 bil-What you see in the music industry is digital rights manage- lion annually in lost profits.SWment as an attempt at mitigating or reducing piracy. This is a similar solution, but for the biological world, Borg adds.Borg spoke March 22 at the Agri-Tech Innovation Summit inON THE WEBWHERE San Francisco, Calif. as part of the Gone in 60 Seconds Start-Up Showcase, in which six start-ups have one minute to pitch theirWant to learn more about Index Biosystems? Check out this video about how biotags work atsolutions to the audience.youtu.be/0cauSgPIhQs42/ SEEDWORLD.COMJUNE 2022'