Evogene announces participation in Phenomics Consortium to develop tools, systems for precision agriculture

Jan 31 2018

Multi-year Phenomics Consortium sponsored by Israel Innovation Authority includes 10 leading companies and academic institutions

Evogene Ltd., a leading biotechnology company developing novel products for life science markets through the use of a unique computational predictive biology platform, announced today its participation in a three-year Israel Innovation Authority sponsored Phenomics Consortium to develop tools and systems for precision agriculture and innovative development of agriculture products.

In addition to Evogene, the Phenomics Consortium consists of Elbit Systems, Hazera Seeds, Opgal Optronic Industries, Rahan Meristem, Sensilize, the Volcani Center of the Agricultural Research Organization, Ben-Gurion University, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Haifa. The goal of the consortium is to develop plant phenotyping technologies, including the generation of comprehensive agricultural ‘Big-Data’ and the development of artificial intelligence algorithms for real time analysis of phenotypic data. The analysis of this data is expected to assist farmers in managing their crop season more efficiently thereby improving yield per acre. IP developed within the framework of the consortium (not including background IP) will be available for use by each of the consortium members.

It is expected that technologies and comprehensive data to be developed by the consortium will potentially be transformative for precision agriculture plant treatment solutions, while at the same time providing new and advanced capabilities for all science based research and development of agricultural products.

The consortium is expected to span over three years, subject to both re-approval each year and an option to be extended to five years. The grant approved for the consortium for calendar year 2018 is ~$5 million, of which ~$1.4 million to Evogene.

Ofer Haviv, Evogene’s President and CEO stated:

We are very happy to join these other leading Israeli companies and academic institutions in this Phenomics consortium.  We are confident that the efforts of this consortium will lead to the development of highly innovative tools and systems with multiple applications for the improvement of agriculture. Specifically for Evogene, we believe the availability to us of these next-generation tools and systems, as well as the Ag Big-Data to be created, will provide further enhancements to our unique and broadly applicable predictive discovery platform, which is at the core of all of our product development programs.