April 20, 2016

Evogene Ltd. has announced that it is participating in a consortium for research in photosynthesis within the EU Horizon 2020 Program for Research and Innovation.

Academic participants include the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and the Institute of Terrestrial Microbiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, and the Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine. The consortium's research programme is focused on an innovative approach to modulate photosynthesis related pathways aimed to improve photosynthetic efficiency.

Evogene, the only commercial entity in this consortium, will lead the efforts for discovery of regulatory elements required for pathway modulation and undertake in plant proof of concept validation, as well as potentially lead commercialisation. 

The consortium will receive a grant of approximately EUR5 million (US$6 million) for the programme in total. Evogene will receive EUR902,000 (US$1.02 million) from this amount for its participation in the consortium.

"Evogene is very proud to be a key member of this prestigious consortium addressing a fundamental and critical aspect of ag-biology, further demonstrating the recognition of our expertise and ability to bring innovation to agriculture,"  Ofer Haviv, president and CEO of Evogene, said. "This capability rests on our unique technology platform, combining proprietary scientific understanding and advanced computational technologies to utilise agriculture big-data. We are confident that our participation will both be of significant value to the research being undertaken by the consortium and enable Evogene to establish novel expertise in photosynthesis as a means of yield improvement, thus adding to our world leading scientific expertise in traits for enhancing crop productivity".

Dr. Arren Bar-Even of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, the coordinator of the consortium, added: "Feeding 10-15 billion people at the end of this century is a tremendously challenging task that will only be met by the implementation of drastic measures to increase agricultural productivity. We try to tackle this challenge by using state-of-the-art synthetic biology tools to design, evolve, and implement highly efficient carbon fixation routes. The project comprises an interdisciplinary effort that integrates diverse skills in computational biology, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology and plant physiology".