Kingston-based Performance Plants Inc has raised $12 million in the first tranche of an anticipated $15-million round of venture financing to move to revenue sustainability by 2009. The 11-year-old plant biotechnology firm secured the funding from a syndicate of venture capital firms to relocate off the Queen's Univ campus into a new facility and ramp up product offerings based on its Value Enhanced Stress Tolerance (VEST) technologies - one of several technologies under development.