Bayer CropScience and Evogene Sign Collaboration Agreement to Improve Wheat Seed
Focus on yield, drought tolerance and fertilizer use efficiency
Bayer CropScience AG and Evogene Ltd. have entered into a five-year collaboration to accelerate the development and introduction of improved wheat varieties. Improvements will be pursued for wheat yield, drought tolerance, fertilizer use efficiency and certain other wheat traits utilizing a combination of advanced breeding and state of the art genetic modification methods. Bayer will have exclusive rights to commercialize in wheat the traits resulting from this collaboration. The collaboration further builds on an on-going partnership between Bayer CropScience and Evogene, which was initiated in 2007 and expanded in 2009, for increasing rice productivity and yield.
In a separate agreement, Bayer CropScience will make an equity investment of USD 12 million in Evogene at a price of approximately USD 7 per ordinary share.
The collaboration will utilize Evogene's ATHLETE, RePack and EvoBreed computational genomic technologies for the identification of genetically modified and native traits to improve yield, drought tolerance, fertilizer utilization and certain other characteristics in wheat.
Bayer CropScience will utilize its capabilities in breeding and product development to incorporate genetically modified and native traits identified by Evogene, into its wheat pipeline for developing elite varieties displaying improved performance. The resulting improved wheat varieties will be commercialized by Bayer CropScience. Evogene will receive approximately USD 20 million in the form of upfront fees and annual research payments over the term of the agreement. Furthermore, the company will receive development milestone payments and royalties on the commercialization of any resulting products. Further details of the agreement were not disclosed.
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