David Duncan

Dr. David N. Duncan has had a long and distinguished career in the fields of agricultural productivity, plant biotechnology and, most recently, plant health and nutrition.

Dr. Duncan’s career began at Monsanto. During his tenure with the company he held various research, development, regulatory and sales management positions. Near the end of his corporate career Dave was GM of Monsanto’s $100M turf and ornamental business; and, led the specialty crop unit overseeing the application of various biotech traits in the specialty crop area. In this role, Dr. Duncan led the formation of Arborgen….a 4-way forestry joint venture organized and structured to develop GM and non-GM traits for the pulp, paper and timber industries.

After 22 years, Duncan retired from Monsanto and founded an entrepreneurial venture with the support of the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise in St. Louis, a business incubator for startup/biotech firms. As entrepreneur-in-residence at the Nidus Center, he founded Colliant Global Ag providing advisory support to help advance ag biotech discoveries through development to commercial launch.

Dr. Duncan has led four startup or early-stage ventures including venture backed Chlorogen, a plant-made pharma company; and, Pasteuria Bioscience which focused on novel biological nematode control in broadacre and specialty crops. After several years of development and commercialization success, Dr. Duncan led the exit strategy for Pasteuria resulting in a staged acquisition of assets by Syngenta for $113M…an 8x cash-on-cash return to the VC investors.

In addition to his new VP role with Finistere, Dr. Duncan serves on the boards of several startup and mezzanine stage companies, both venture backed and private equity owned.