FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
James Radtke, Ph. D. Named Vice President, Product Development At Cibus
San Diego, California (May 21, 2007) — Cibus—the privately held San Diego-based trait development company—has named James Radtke, Ph. D., Vice President of Product Development. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Radtke will serve as a link between lab programs, the field and ultimately the customer.
Working closely with partners to develop strategies for incorporating Cibus traits into their commercial plans, he will manage product timelines from the development of a trait in the lab until its introduction into the commercial market. He will also be involved in field testing and confirmation of Cibus traits in plants.
“Jim joins the Cibus team at a very exciting moment, following a year of significant advances—including strategic alliances with Valent and the National Grain Sorghum Producers Foundation,” said Cibus President Keith Walker. “Jim’s presence on the growing Cibus team will help us maximize all of our potential business opportunities.”
Prior to joining Cibus, Radtke—an expert plant breeder with over 25 years of experience in the seed industry—served as the former Global Temperate Corn Breeding Leader for Dow AgroSciences.
From 1993 to 2005, he held leadership positions at Mycogen, overseeing corn, soybeans, sunflowers and peanut breeding programs and influencing overall company strategy and direction.
Radtke previously worked with Northrup King, Sungene Technologies and Agrigenetics. Active in the American Seed Trade Association, Radtke most recently has served as President of the NCCPB (National Council of Commercial Plant Breeders).
Radtke received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He resides in St. Paul, MN with his wife, Sue and son, Phillip.
National Grain Sorghum Producers Foundation
Dr. Bruce Maunder
Larry Lambright
806-749-3478
The Rosen Group
Shawna Seldon
212.255.7541
Notes to Editors:
About RTDS™
RTDS™ technology produces changes within a plant species that could only occur in nature, but does so in a directed way. Thanks in part to recent developments in genome mapping, RTDS is significantly more precise and much faster than conventional plant breeding in the process of new trait development in plants.
RTDS, known as directed mutagenesis, works through the cell’s natural process of gene repair. Every time a cell copies DNA, it makes “scrivener” errors or spelling mistakes. These variations happen all the time, which is how natural variation occurs. Cibus’ technology harnesses the cell’s own natural DNA repair machinery to correct such spelling mistakes, thus directing DNA repair enzymes to correct and repair the targeted gene in a specific way in order to produce a desired trait. This very precise process is similar to altering a single letter in a word contained within a large book.
About Cibus
Cibus is a privately held San Diego-based trait development company. Cibus produces environmentally friendly crop traits for the agricultural community that do not carry the market-resistance or regulatory burden of attributes engineered through the introduction of foreign genetic material. The Company accomplishes this through the application of a new and proprietary technology called the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™), which has proven itself in the laboratory with several different crops, and in initial field trials of Cibus’ first commercial crop.
