In the early 90s, Limagrain worked on a project called "Molecular Pharming", a sort of internal start-up whose goal was to use plants to produce proteins which, in turn, would be used in the production of vaccines. We carried this project for several years, and then we realized that bringing it to completion would require huge investments on a scale that would bring us into the realm of the pharmaceutical industry. At that juncture, we could have decided to specialize in this area, but that would have meant abandoning a certain number of traditional activities of the group and venturing far from our core expertise.

The decision was made to bring in outside investors and the sort of venture capital that is focused on such risky technologies. A separate company was created, in which Limagrain is still a stockholder. The project is still progressing. Nor surprisingly, it has encountered all the hurdles and regulatory obstacles associated traditionally with the testing and launching of pharmaceutical products. We do believe the project will ultimately bring good products to market, but the company that shepherds them will be quite different from a traditional seed company whose purpose is to create food products.