b'a day in the lab with BioConsortia5 skills that help them to innovate.Marc ZienkiewiczTHE CALIFORNIA-BASED Swapping HatsBioConsortia develops microbial consortia for increasing agriculturalThe first step is to operate more like plant breeders. We grow thousands yields. BioConsortia was establishedof plants in the absence of or reduced nitrogen in the soil and see which in 2014 as the parent company toplants are able to grow healthily. Then we know on that plant there is a New Zealand based subsidiary, BioDiscovery Limited, founded innatural population of bacteria helping the plant to grow. We move the 1994. The company specializes inmicrobes from those high performing plants onto the next generation of the discovery and development ofseed. We are effectively evolving the microbiome through that process, natural microbial products.isolating individual strains off those highest performing plants that have They now hold one of thegrown for several generations.worlds largest collections of pre-screened and characterized microorganisms, comprising over 65,000 microbes, including 9,000 Using New Toolsendophytes, the microbes that reside in plant tissues and mostJust a few years ago directly affect survival and growth. youd have come into Seed World sat down withour lab and seen a chief executive officer Marcus Meadows-Smith and microbiologytechnician with scissors and collection director Dr. Thomasworking on the plants. Its Williams for this Day in the Labnow done in a far more feature, where we serve uptechnological way using some quick examples of what andigital imaging, robotics organization does on a daily basis, based on where their strengths liefor root analysis, and and what helps them to accomplishfluorescence tagging of their goals on a typical day. microbes to assess root BioConsortias global corporatecolonization.headquarters is located in Davis, Calif., in an ever-expanding community of biotechnology companies. New laboratories have been built to mirror much of the companys New Zealand facility, leading to complementary development of microbial products. On any given day, staff are:28/ SEEDWORLD.COMJUNE 2020'