Iowa offers a helping hand to NZ biotech firms

By SIMON COLLINS

IOWA - Iowa rolled out the red carpet at the weekend for a group of mostly tiny New Zealand biotech companies which might some day use the state's services to grow genetically modified food.

The US "corn state" of just under 3 million people is committed to genetic modification.

About half its corn and 85 per cent of its soybeans have been modified to withstand Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller.

A member of the state's Economic Development Board who lived in Auckland from 1990 to 1994, Marcia Rogers, decided that New Zealand was a potential market for Iowa's GM companies when she was on holiday in Northland 18 months ago and read about AgResearch's battle to win approval to genetically modify cows.

"I approached our department and said 'this is a real opportunity for Iowa to help New Zealand'," she said.

"I don't mean take credit, I mean collaboration. We can help them in terms of their research when they get stuck in the court system."

The idea fitted with an emphasis on biotechnology as a means of "transforming" agricultural economies by Helen Clark's Government in New Zealand and Iowa's Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack led a 30-person Iowa biotech mission to New Zealand in March, and this weekend Science Minister Pete Hodgson led a return mission of universities, research institutes and nine companies with an average staff of five.

The Iowans flew the 24 New Zealanders around the state in four chartered planes and lined up 200 meetings for them with Iowa businesses and researchers.

They laid on a reception at a new development in Dubuque on Friday, and Vilsack hosted a dinner at his Des Moines mansion on Saturday.

The New Zealanders were impressed. "We won't know the result for two years, but there was a level of interaction which far surpassed my expectations," Hodgson said.

Only one company, Encoate, had a strong enough potential deal to announce it publicly.

But Dr Kannan Subramaniam, general manager of the Fonterra/Auckland University joint venture LactoPharma, said he had found two organisations that "have potential for working with us in the future in developing bioactives" - commercially valuable substances in cow's milk or other biological material.

Forest Research chief operating officer Dr Tom Richardson met scientists at Iowa State University trying to create "biological plastics" and other materials out of corn stalks, just as the Rotorua institute is trying to make them out of timber.

Dr Frank Griffin of Otago University found a potential test for Johne's disease in cattle, developed at the National Animal Disease Centre in Iowa, which complements a vaccine for the disease in deer, developed at Otago.

The head of the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, Dr Helen Anderson, said it was intriguing to see that Iowa State University's world-leading Plant Sciences Institute defined its mission as to "use our core technologies to enhance the value of Iowa crops".

"That's quite a different function from solely a higher-education institution," she said. "That was quite a big 'hello' to me."

Dr Subramaniam said the other main research campus at the University of Iowa also offered space in its incubator to New Zealand companies moving into North America.

"But what really interests me in Iowa is that they are so similar to us in their culture, in their literacy, in the way they do things and in their agricultural origins."

* Simon Collins' trip was paid for by NZ Trade & Enterprise through the Qantas Media Awards.