The agricultural industry is perpetually focused on producing more food to keep up with population growth, both in the developed world, but equally as important, in less-developed countries. Factor in a consistently diminishing amount of arable land around the world that can successfully grow crops, and we have a huge problem. Enhancing agricultural products on the genetic level requires millions of tests to be run as new iterations are added and improved upon, to ensure safety and productivity, especially in amplifying the genomes enough to be mapped (a process known as ‘next-generation sequencing,’ or ‘NGS’) and to test for genetic traits of interest in plants.

Even being able to cut the number of tests run in half by multiplexing two targets per sample simultaneously using CoPrimers™has a tremendous benefit in efficiency and development costs; multiplexing 4 or 8 targets per sample at once has cost-savings that are irresistible to that industry. Multiplexing can also greatly reduce the cost and improve efficiency of testing vast quantities of agricultural products for harmful bacteria, such as E. coli.