Ag-West Bio Inc. is a catalyst for Saskatchewan’s bioeconomy, helping to move research to market. A not-for-profit, member-based organization, Ag-West Bio is funded by Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada's Growing Forward program. The company was created in 1989 as Ag-West Biotech and renamed Ag-West Bio in 2004.  Ag-West Bio member companies include research organizations, industry (from SMEs to multinationals), research service organizations, economic development organizations and commodity groups. Members represent the biotechnology, bioproducts and biofuels, and health and nutrition sectors.  Entrepreneurs commercializing their innovations come to Ag-West Bio for pathfinding and help creating a sound business plan. We collaborate with the Raj Manek Mentorship program, matching protégés with experienced mentors.  Our commercialization fund has assisted many early stage companies, as well as enabling established companies expand their businesses. By hosting numerous networking events, conferences and seminars, we help our community stay connected and informed. We lead delegations to relevant conferences, such as BIO International, and help set up meetings for incoming delegations interested in doing business or finding research partners in Saskatchewan. Ag-West Bio also participates with like-minded companies from across Canada in creating awareness of the industry for the government.

Ag-West Bio

Smart Earth Seeds

Smart Earth Seeds is dedicated to developing the best Camelina varieties available while working hand-in-hand with our growers to provide excellent production practices.  We are the leading global Camelina enterprise and we maintain a continuous plant-breeding program unmatched in scale and scope.  Our plant-breeding activities provide a significant pipeline of trait development to ensure maximum yield and profitability for our growers for years to come.  Camelina is a unique low-input dryland oilseed crop and is a high-yielding source of nutritionally important Omega fatty acids, delivered in a high anti-oxidant background. It provides excellent quality meal and oil for animal feed and aquaculture. Camelina can be produced on marginal lands with significantly lower inputs than other oilseeds such as canola while providing competitive yields. The oil profile is similar to flax in that it provides high-Omega oil but has greater oxidative stability than flax.  Camelina oil is in high demand for aquaculture, improving the N6:N3 ratio in farmed fish while delivering a more sustainable marine-free diet and so reduces the requirement to use fish oil. Camelina meal produces high-Omega eggs in layers and meat in broilers. Promising markets include dairy, companion pets and human health and nutrition.

Smart Earth Seeds develops Camelina varieties, a low-input oilseed crop that is a high-yielding source of nutritionally important omega fatty acids. The Camelina breeding program focuses on improving traits such as seed yield, seed oil content, seed size, disease resistance, and herbicide tolerance. Its product portfolio comprises Camelina Oil for Equine and Camelina Oil for Canine, providing benefits such as agronomic advantages, catering to targeted production scenarios, reduced production risks, and higher yield potential for producers. It serves the dairy, companion pets, and human health and nutrition markets. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, the company is privately held.

Enhancing seed and crop traits via biotechnology

Crop Biotech

Lone Star Industrial Materials is a cultivation company that manufactures raw hemp materials. Its product portfolio consists of bast fiber, refined cellulose, and hemp hurd, seeds, hearts, fines and oil. Additionally, it offers retail products such as HempSorb, animal bedding, and hemp control socks. Hemp requires less land, improves nutritional health, is environmentally friendly, helps soil regeneration, grows in various climates, absorbs a great deal of CO2, is a rotational crop and reduces waste. Hemp is used in construction, insulation, bioplastics, and as hemp wood. The privately held company has developed an end-to-end supply chain from seed genetics to delivery.

Lone Star Industrial Materials

PLANTeDIT operates in the plant genome editing field to produce improved crop species through transformation technology and a CRISPR/Cas9 delivery system. It produces regulatory-free, consumer-oriented, DNA-free and sustainable genome edited crops and biopharmaceuticals. The company’s offering includes non-transgenic high oleic soya, which is produced by mutating the FAD2 gene, which eventually increases the oleic oil content in the soya bean. This product was developed through a collaboration between PLANTeDIT and ToolGen. The organization has also collaborated with RebelBio, University College Cork and IAPB. Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, PLANTeDIT is privately held.

PLANTEDIT

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 Amforo is a biotech company that focuses on developing foods that are high in protein by enhancing the nutritional density of food and feed crops through the platform of technologies it has built. The company offers a family of feed and food crops, including primary ingredients for suppliers of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives. In addition, it is focused on developing a low-cost, plant-based source of protein for farmed seafood. Moreover, Amforo is pursuing approaches to enhance the nutritional profile of crops as well as their protein content, which entails optimizing amino acid profiles, modifying carbohydrates, and enhancing micronutrients.
 
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Amfora

BioHeuris provides weed management solutions by combining synthetic biology and gene editing to develop herbicide resistant crops. Its offering includes Heurik, a technology platform that integrates rational design and directed evolution to identify mutations that confer herbicide tolerance, while Swap is the platform that introduces these mutations in crops using gene editing. The company cultivates soybeans, sorghum, rice, cotton, and alfalfa. It has partnered with Santa Rosa Semillas, Adecoagro, Gensus, GDM, Aceleradora Litoral, Tobin, Rotam, Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas, Benson Hill, and Plant Science Center. Headquartered in Rosario, Argentina, BioHeuris is privately held with an office in the US.

BioHeuris

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 Tropic Biosciences is a privately held developer of high-performing commercial varieties of tropical crops that promote cultivation efficiencies, improve sustainable environmental practices and enhance consumer health through its use of cutting-edge genetic editing technologies. Its GEiGS Technology combines gene editing and RNAi in a single platform that enables critical disease resistance and quality improvement traits. The technology caters to the banana production, row crops, livestock, and poultry industries. The company’s partners include Temasek, Agronomics, Polaris Founders Capital, and Excellence Through Stewardship. Headquartered in the UK, Tropical Biosciences has been featured in The Telegraph, Nature, Fast Company, and the Financial Times. 
 
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Tropic Biosciences

Companies that develop or use biological, physical and chemical agents and techniques to provide protection and improve the quality of a seed. This includes the sale of seed coating, or seed enhancement products as methods to treat seeds.

Companies that redesign large clusters of genes and gene parts rather than modifying or engineering a single gene for improving the traits of a plant.

Companies that utilize genetic engineering tools and technologies to use existing and naturally present gene variants in a plant and the natural process of breeding such as inbreeding, and linebreeding to develop better traits for plants.

Companies that use transgenesis processes like tissue culturing to develop transgenic plants or seeds by inserting new genes into them from other plants or in certain instances other organisms like bacteria or even animals.

Companies that offer techniques such as epigenetics, RNA interference (RNAi) to temporarily block a specific gene that would trigger unwanted effect such as a disease on a plant.

Companies that develop a platform to insert, edit, or delete the DNA of a plant itself using approaches such as CRISPR-Cas 9, TALENs, and Zinc Fingers. These approaches help develop plant genes or seeds with traits such as disease-resistant, enhanced-performance, or improve yield.

Biotech solutions to produce crops that are sustainable and offer better traits

Offers customization of genes and traits as required by farmers

Uses AI/machine learning to facilitate their platform/biotech processes like gene editing

Smart Earth Seeds

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