Syngenta Crop Protection and Ginkgo Bioworks are cooperating to accelerate the launch of a new biological solution.

Through this new collaboration, Ginkgo plans to develop and optimize a microbial strain that can meet the productivity targets of a secondary metabolite from the Syngenta Biologicals pipeline. This molecule is earmarked by Syngenta as a pioneering biological solution. Production of this targeted metabolite would expedite Syngenta’s go-to-market timeline for its latest biological solution, according to the company.

To achieve this, Ginkgo will use its ag biologicals capabilities to calculate theoretical performance and guide rational strain engineering strategies to develop the microbial strain that is robust enough to meet Syngenta’s goals. Ginkgo will leverage its biological knowledge and machine learning approaches to develop insights from multiple complex data sources and apply this toward diagnosing strain performance limitations as well as biological feature discovery.

The two companies have previously collaborated on next-generation seed technology.