Partners

Magnus Hertzberg

SweTree Technologies AB is an SME working with plant and forestry biotech research and development. The company aims to be the leading provider of superior seedlings, tree genes and enabling gene technologies for future plantation forestry and also provides proprietary technologies and products to the seedling and forestry industry, the fibre industry (pulp, paper and packaging sectors), and for niche areas of the agricultural biotech business.

SweTree actively searches for genes that will improve the commercial properties of wood and wood products and also develops enabling technologies such as flowering control, promoters and environmentally friendly selection markers for transgenic trees. STT has developed a large-scale programme for identification of genes and characterization of transgenic plants (FuncWood GENErator, RNAi and up-regulation platforms) involved in the control of flowering and wood formation. The company has filed over 40 patents belonging to 18 patent families and has already commercialized several of its inventions.

Tasks in the consortium

In this project SweTree Technologies, in cooperation with other participants, will construct RNAi lines and over expression lines in poplar for key genes involved in cell wall formation with a possible connection to saccharification potential. Some specific constructs from WP6 will also be made by SweTree and transgenic poplar trees produced expressing these constructs. These lines will be analysed in SweTree's phenotypic analysis platform "FuncWood Explorer".and then transferred to WP1 for saccharification analysis.

Contributor: Karin Johansson

Web: http://www.swetree.com