BioConsortia, a newly formed parent company of BioDiscovery New Zealand, based in Davis, California, has named Marcus Meadows-Smith as its Chief Executive Officer earlier this year. BioConsortia is an agricultural biotechnology company that has invented a method for rapidly identifying microbes that co-operate to form consortia that significantly improve crop yields.

Meadows-Smith leads BioConsortia through the business development and commercialisation phase for the company's ground-breaking "microbial consortia" products, which have been proven to improve plant productivity and enhance other desirable crop traits. Meadows-Smith joined BioConsortia after serving as CEO and rebuilding the biopesticide business for AgraQuest, Inc., which he subsequently sold to Bayer CropScience for nearly $500 million. He previously spent 14 years at Chemtura Corporation, where he served as Executive Vice President in charge of a $1.9 billion portfolio of businesses including the crop protection, consumer products, and plastic additives divisions.

"The greatest challenge we face in agriculture is the question of how to produce more food per acre," said Meadows-Smith. "I believe BioConsortia has all the right tools and technology to make a significant contribution to high production, sustainable agriculture."
BioConsortia's proprietary system uses the latest genomic techniques to accelerate identification of true consortia of microbes, rather than single microbes or a stack of microbes from individual assays. BioConsortia uses this system to define products for specific crop improvement traits. The technology is equally applicable to conventional and transgenic crops.

Preparing for the Next Phase
Khosla Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, provided seed capital in 2011 to BioDiscovery to refine their model for rapidly and effectively identifying beneficial microbial consortia. BioDiscovery elected to create the BioConsortia parent company to take the microbe biotechnology to global markets. BioConsortia headquarters, which will include a research and development facility, will be in the United States. Dr Peter Wigley, CEO of the BioDiscovery subsidiary, will continue to head up the New Zealand research & development organization.

"Marcus understands the potential of the technology developed by the BioDiscovery team and it is exciting to see such an accomplished executive join the team to build upon what has been achieved to date", said Wigley. "He fits well with the current team and we are very confident of his ability to lead the next phase of expansion and commercialisation."

"The team has made tremendous progress over the past two years, and we believe BioConsortia has the potential to be a transformative platform in agricultural biotechnology," said Andrew Chung, partner at Khosla Ventures and a director on the company's board. "We are extremely pleased that Marcus shares our vision and has chosen to bring his skill and experience to BioConsortia, since he has been so instrumental bringing new, progressive approaches - like biologicals -- into mainstream agriculture."