CropDesign

CropDesign is a Belgian agricultural biotechnology company specializing in the development of agronomic traits for major crops such as rice and corn. Founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), the company is best known for its TraitMill platform, a high-throughput phenotyping facility used to identify genes that enhance crop yield and stress tolerance. CropDesign was acquired by BASF Plant Science in 2006 to serve as a core R&D engine for its plant biotechnology pipeline. In 2021, BASF divested the CropDesign site back to VIB, which transformed the facility into an AgBio incubator, effectively concluding CropDesign's operations as a standalone subsidiary.