San Diego

An industrial–academic partnership on plant research that rocked the University of California (UC), Berkeley, when it started five years ago is quietly coming to an end.

The deal, under which Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural biotechnology firm, provided $25 million to the university's department of plant and microbial biology, will expire on 23 November, after the company declined to exercise its option to continue it. The deal was originally drawn up by Novartis, which spun off its agricultural interest in 2000 to form Syngenta.

“There is a shift in how we do discovery research,” says plant biologist Simon Bright, head of technology interaction for Syngenta at Jealott's Hill, Berkshire, UK. “We are focusing on moving discoveries in the pipeline to products.”

UC Berkeley officials say that they are unsurprised, but that they would have liked to renew the agreement. “It funded a lot of blue-sky research that would not otherwise have taken place,” says political scientist Robert Price, UC Berkeley's associate vice-chancellor for research.

Early next year, an independent analysis of the partnership's impact is to be completed by a research team from Michigan State University (MSU) in Lansing. The $225,000 study —run by sociologist Lawrence Busch of MSU's Institute of Food and Agricultural Standards — was commissioned by the UC Berkeley academic senate.

When the Syngenta pact was revealed five years ago, it caused a fierce argument about relationships between industry and university departments (see Nature 399, 5; 199910.1038/19807). It gave faculty and students access to dynamic technologies, such as proprietary plant sequence databases, but allowed the corporation to keep rights to discoveries.

UC Berkeley officials say that Syngenta reviewed some 375 abstracts of scientific research undertaken by faculty members and students. Preliminary discussions have been held about the corporation licensing one undisclosed discovery for development, officials say. Plant pathologist Brian Staskawicz, the UC Berkeley professor who supervised the deal, says: “I think everyone would agree the collaboration was a great success. It really was an experiment.” Other faculty members say that they will await the results of the outside analysis before commenting.