Metapontum Agrobios manages high competitive research programs in tight collaboration with several national and international research groups. Research activities can be grouped into three main areas.

Plant biotechnology, allowing the transfer of new traits to target plants, can lead to the production of new genotypes never realisable with traditional breeding. In the nineties the first biotechnological products have reached the market and now the first generation of transgenic products, i.e. ripening modified tomatoes, insect resistant cotton and maize, herbicide resistant soybean, is commercialised in many countries in the world and a second generation of transgenic products is coming out. The principal objective of these technologies is production and quality improvement linked to the environment and health safety. Plant biotechnology is now becoming a big source of innovation for the agriculture such as for food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Plant biotechnology plays also an important role in environmental cleanup by bio and phytoremediation processes, i.e. the use of plants to decontaminate polluted soils and water. Metapontum Agrobios is involved since 1989 in biotechnological researches and has developed an important know how and several transgenic products.

 

The rapid economic development of the modern society produced a lot of modification in the environment (atmosphere, water , soil). As a consequence of these modifications people developed a new environmental awareness and asked for of new programs for the safety of the world. To this request government replied introducing a set of laws and rules for the safety of the environment. Metapontum Agrobios has been recently involved in environmental projects with a set of new research programs devoted to monitor pollution in waste, water and soils with particular attention to pesticides, heavy metals, aromatic and chlorinate compounds and nitrates. Further the company manages, in collaboration with the technician of the local government, a network of weather stations.

Today consumers attention is particularly addressed to quality and safety of food. Integrated and biological production are greatly welcome and the European Community disciplinary regulate pesticide use in agriculture. Metapontum Agrobios is involved in research programs to improve and assess the quality of agricultural products, define sustainable methods of production and monitor the environment. Moreover, to evaluate under the rule of EC the transgenic plants produced in the course of the biotechnological researches (OGM), some experimental field are periodically set up. Furthermore the company is actually involved in developing some interactive decision support systems (SSD) about crop protection and fertilisation of orchards (grape, olive, drupaceous and citrus) that will offer new "user friendly" tools for a correct management of crops.