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Syngenta announced the donation of important genetic information on
Phytophthora infestans or Potato Late Blight, one of the most devastating
plant diseases in global agriculture, to an international scientific gene
database, February 2005.

Syngenta is donating sequence information on nearly 18,000 individual
genes expressed at key stages in the life-cycle of Phytophthora infestans as
well as most of its genomic sequence to GenBank, a publicly available DNA
database. Syngenta has worked for five years within the Syngenta
Phytophthora Consortium, an international panel of academic institutions, to
analyse these genes and develop a partial genomic sequence.

Late Blight was the cause of the Irish Potato Famine (1845?1850) and
continues to cause billions of dollars worth of losses to potato and tomato
crops each year. The Phytophthora infestans family also includes the
pathogen causing the emergent Sudden Oak Death disease recently recognized
in California .

?We are very pleased to announce this significant contribution to the
scientific community?s understanding of this plant pathogen?, said David
Lawrence, Head of Research and Technology at Syngenta. ?These data-sets will
be a unique tool for scientists investigating and seeking novel control
strategies for Late Blight and related plant diseases.?

Later this year Syngenta also plans to make available genomic data for three
other important plant pathogens, the fungi: Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium
graminearum and Fusariumverticilliodes.

[www.syngenta.com]

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