US Patent Issued to Suntory Holdings on June 24 for "High steviol glycoside-containing stevia plant and method for screening same" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,338,498, issued on June 24, was assigned to Suntory Holdings Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).

"High steviol glycoside-containing stevia plant and method for screening 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 steviol glycoside content, that includes detecting from the genome of a test stevia plant the presence and/or the absence of the following genetic feature: (1) homozygous for the allele wherein the base at the position co...