On January 30 Monsanto acquired select assets from Agradis. The purchase includes Agradis's large collection of plant-associated microbes and screening processes focused on sustainable solutions to boost crop health and productivity, as well as its R&D site in La Jolla, California. Agradis' assets fit with the St. Louis–based Monsanto's relatively new push into agricultural biologicals. “We see ag biologicals as a very exciting area, complementing breeding and biotechnology as part of a total system, but again it's early days,” says Monsanto spokesperson Sara Miller. Monsanto also announced in January a multi-year research collaboration with La Jolla–based Synthetic Genomics, led by Craig Venter, which spun out Agradis, to analyze plant microbe communities and screen for beneficial microorganisms. Monsanto is one of several agribusiness companies to gain a foothold into the $1.7-billion ag biologicals market. In September 2012 Basel-based Syngenta paid $113 million for Pasteuria Bioscience, a startup in Alachua, Florida, with a novel biological process to control nematode pests in plants (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 1158, 2012), and chemicals maker BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany, forged a $1-billion deal for Becker Underwood, a global provider of biological crop protection products based in Ames, Iowa.