December 9, 2015

BASF and Evogene to collaborate on developing novel herbicide

BASF and Evogene Ltd. had announced the signing of a three-year collaboration for the discovery and development of novel herbicides.

Under the agreement, Evogene will utilise its biology-driven computational discovery approach to identify potential candidate chemicals for novel herbicides.

BASF will use its proprietary advanced plant platform to screen candidate chemicals in order to experimentally validate their biological effects on weeds.

Successful candidates from this collaboration will be further developed by BASF.

BASF and Evogene bring key capabilities to the collaboration. With its first herbicide launched in 1949, BASF currently offers one of the industry's strongest and most diverse weed control portfolio.

Evogene is a market leader in bringing predictive biology to agricultural innovation by combining strong understandings of plant science with advanced computational tools for the analysis of the main data.

Building on these core capabilities, Evogene disclosed the discovery and successful validation of a set of plant targets in July this year. These will be part of the collaboration.

"Weed resistance is a pressing issue for many growers across the world. Thus, establishing such a partnership to help us identify and develop herbicides with novel modes of action is needed more than ever before," said Jordi Tormo, BASF Crop Protection's vice president for global research (herbicides and services). "It is a great opportunity to combine Evogene's expertise in plant physiology and computational   biology with BASF's strength in lead structure optimisation and product development."