Hayward, California
March 7, 2002

Mendel Biotechnology, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company, announced today the completion of a $6 million Series B private placement. The investment, led by the Biotechnology Value Fund, L.P. of San Francisco, represents Mendel's first institutional private financing.

"This financing is a significant event for Mendel, as it brings in both capital and experienced institutional investors who can help us achieve our ambitious growth plans," said Dave Summa, President and CEO of Mendel. "Over the past five years, Mendel has discovered what we believe to be the world's largest collection of functionally characterized plant transcription factors. Transcription factors are a family of gene 'switches' that control virtually all significant plant traits, including yield, disease resistance, freezing and drought protection, as well as the production of chemicals and proteins used as pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and consumer products. With this Series B investment, we plan to begin commercializing the most valuable of Mendel's discoveries."

Mark N. Lampert, President of Biotechnology Value Fund, L.P., who will become a member of the Company's Board of Directors, stated, "Mendel is a tremendously exciting company. Founded by a preeminent group of plant scientists and partnered with leading agriculture companies, Mendel has been amazingly productive in its mission to discover commercially important plant transcription factors. Mendel's transcription factors represent actual product candidates, not just stepping-stones on a long road to products, as is typical for human genomic discoveries. We believe Mendel has the potential to become a very big company; we are proud to become part of its future success."

Founded in 1997, Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. is a pioneer in the application of functional genomics to the study of plant genes. Mendel's mission is to discover and characterize the function of important plant genes and to develop and commercialize high-value products based on these discoveries. Mendel's products could benefit customers in agriculture, healthcare, specialty ingredient, forestry and horticulture markets. Mendel has partnerships with three of the six largest agriculture companies, including Monsanto, and Savia, the world's largest vegetable company.