Evogene Participates In Israeli Agbio Consortium

BIOTOV MAGNET Consortium to focus on improved Nutritional Qualities for Fruits and Vegetable

30-Nov-2006

Evogene Ltd. announced its participation in the BIOTOV MAGNET Israeli research consortium. The Israeli MAGNET program (Generic Pre-Competitive Technologies and Research and Development) finances research consortia to develop enabling technologies in targeted high potential industries. The BIOTOV consortium is focused on enabling the Expression of secondary metabolites in plants that can improve or restore taste or flavor in fruits and vegetables, as well as the enrichment of such fruits and vegetables for producing nutraceuticals.

The consortium consists of a group of Israeli companies and academic institutes active in the field of agro-biotechnology, seed and flavors, including, in addition to Evogene, the two Israeli seed companies Hazera Genetics and Zeraim Gedera, Rahan Meristem Ltd. a producer of banana plantlets and Frutarom Industries a producer of flavors and fragrances. The academic institutes participating include the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Vulcani Institute (Agricultural Research Organization) and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

A budget of approximately US$1.9 million has been approved for the first year of activity, of which the Israeli government will provide 66%. The consortium members estimate that a total budget of about US$9 million will be required over a three year period.

Evogene's role in the consortium will be to design, create and integrate the genomic and metabolomics databases from public sources and the proprietary data generated by the consortium participants and to further develop computational biology tools to provide lead gene candidates for validation by the consortium participants.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/59807/evogene-participates-in-israeli-agbio-consortium.html