Huge potential for award winning Agtech innovation

Huge potential for award winning Agtech innovation

An Agtech breeding innovation that could result in a major boost to New Zealand’s GDP has gained a global award for University of Auckland photonics expert, Associate Professor Cather Simpson.

Dr Simpson, the Director of the Photon Factory at the University of Auckland, has developed an entirely new high-tech laser assisted process to sort bovine sperm into male and female by manipulating materials to create tiny channels in order to develop an entirely new ‘microfluidic’ device.

The technology gives dairy farmers a low cost way to control the composition of their herd and provides much better outcomes than the existing technology.

The early research science into this Agtech innovation using Dr Simpson’s skills in both photonics and materials was developed over the past decade at the University of Auckland.
She says the business opportunities for this Agtech are huge for New Zealand.

“The AI market for agriculture is US$2.4 billion. Dairy is New Zealand’s biggest export earner and when Engender succeeds it is projected to raise New Zealand’s GDP by 0.2 percent.”

Dr Simpson also sees application for this technology for the pork industry next.

Her start-up company, Engender Technologies, competed against three American firms in the Agtech section of the Third Annual World Cup Technology Challenge.

The company’s win in this section was the first win in this World Cup Technology Challenge by an Australasian company and is a significant achievement or the New Zealand technology start-up sector.

“The University is delighted with the success of Associate Professor Simpson and her team,” says the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research, Professor Jim Metson. “This technology demonstrates remarkable science and innovation applied to a hard technical problem.”

Dr Simpson says that smart dairy farmers wanted to control the composition of their herd and at the top of their list is the sex of their offspring.

“There’s only one solution currently available for dairy sex selection and it’s expensive and doesn’t work very well, so farmers are frustrated,” she says. “Engender uses novel microfluidics and laser photonics to sort sperm with X or Y chromosomes using the same physics that NASA uses to propel solar cells in space, but applied to single cells.”

The University’s commercialisation company UniServices, assisted in the formation of Engender and the licensing of the intellectual property.

ENDS

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