US Patent Issued to Suntory Holdings on Aug. 19 for "Stevia plant having high rebaudioside M content ratio and screening method for same" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,389,848, issued on Aug. 19, was assigned to Suntory Holdings Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).

"Stevia plant having high rebaudioside M content ratio and screening method for same" was invented by Tadayoshi Hirai (Kyoto, Japan), Kazunari Iwaki (Kanagawa, Japan), Kentaro Ochiai (Kyoto, Japan), Saori Takeyama (Kanagawa, Japan) and Katsuro Miyagawa (Kyoto, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of screening for a stevia plant with high rebaudioside M content ratio, that includes detecting from a test stevia plant the presence and/or absence of at least one of (1) and (2), and at least one of (3) to (7): (1) homozygous for the allele wherein posit...