Jacklin Wins Race For Valuable Fungus
After years of trying, the race is won.
Jacklin Seed Co. announced this week it has obtained a patent for a fungus which makes Kentucky bluegrass naturally resistant to insects and disease.
It’s a technique the company had been trying to perfect for years, finally achieved last winter, and now has patented. Industry experts have said it could revolutionize turf maintenance, reducing the need for pesticides.
It was a race to see who could get a disease-resistant “endophyte,” or fungus, that exists naturally in ryegrass and tall fescue to fix itself to the bluegrass and bentgrass strains.
“There were two or three other universities that were attempting the same thing,” said Doug Brede, Jacklin’s research director. “They had small successes.”
Jacklin Seed hired away one of those universities’ researchers. Suichang Sun, who left Rutgers University for the laboratory at Jacklin Seed’s Post Falls headquarters, performed all the lab work in infecting the bluegrass with the endophyte fungus.
Sun traveled the world searching for a solution. He sometimes stopped in remote places to study and collect foreign grasses and look for the right endophyte. The most difficult visit was in a restricted zone between Russia, Kazakhstan and China.
“The area is the most disputed in the world militarily,” Brede said. “But in that triangle is where we found a few of the grasses that had this endophyte.”
Though Jacklin Seed has just made the patent public, other grass seed producers have already called, asking if they could use the endophyte technique in their grass varieties, Brede said.
Jacklin Seed will first figure out the potential costs of sharing the find, the researcher said. Putting this discovery on the market, which the company plans to do within two years, could mean millions more for the company that claims $40 million in annual sales.
“This endophyte patent will completely change the way the turfgrass and turf maintenance business is conducted,” said Doyle Jacklin, president of the company. “It will greatly reduce the chemical applications turf professionals use to maintain healthy disease-free turf.”
The patent for the endophyte in all varieties of Kentucky bluegrass and creeping bentgrass was a ceremonious occasion at the company’s headquarters. But nobody broke out the champagne.
“We did celebrate - with donuts,” Brede said.
It has been a busy month for the grass seed company. On Sept. 4, the Jacklin family announced they were selling the seed and turf operations in Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Idaho to Boise-based J.R. Simplot Co. The cash deal, which includes the research, seed processing and turf marketing departments, is expected to close Oct. 8.
, DataTimes