This acquisition will build on DuPont's in-house capabilities and unparalleled market access in both seed and crop protection to discover and commercialize biological solutions for agriculture customers globally.

"In 2014, the businesses in DuPont's agriculture, nutrition and health and industrial biosciences segments sold more than $1 billion in biological solutions across four market sectors. Our in-house, cross-business venture, DuPont Biologicals, draws on our world-class science and deep understanding of food and production agriculture markets to deliver value-added crop biological solutions," said DuPont's EVP Mr James C Borel.

"Taxon has built a leading technology platform for the discovery of microbial based products that will further strengthen our capabilities in biologicals," he added.

Based in California, Taxon was founded in 2000 by leading microbial geneticists Dr Matt Ashby and Prof Jasper Rine, with the objective of developing a transformational microbial genomics platform to solve critical challenges in agriculture, energy and health sciences.

The company holds a broad intellectual property estate in the field of microbial consortia and microbial genomics products which will contribute to the development of new DuPont seed treatment, foliar and soil application products for important row crops, fruits and vegetables.

"The acquisition of Taxon will complement and enhance our in-house microbial discovery programs," said Mr Frank DeGennaro, director, DuPont Biologicals. "With this added capability, we expect to accelerate our time from discovery-to-market and we are field testing biological discovery leads identified by Taxon this year."