Evogene Ltd. and Biogemma announced today their participation in the TAGIP European FP6 research consortium.  The TAGIP consortium is focused on enabling the targeted integration of genes in plants.

The consortium, led by Professor Avi Levy of the Weizmann Institute of Science, includes, in addition to the two commercial partners, six academic institutions. The academic partners include: Prof. Karel Angelis of the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Czech Republic), Prof. Jerzy Paszkowski of the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Prof. Holger Puchta of Karlsruhe University (Germany) and Prof. Charles White of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France).

Dr Hagai Karchi, Evogene’s VP of R&D stated: “We are pleased to participate in this consortium with such an elite group of partners.  The TAGIP partnership will provide Evogene with additional state-of-the art tools for precise engineering of plant genomes.  We anticipate that all our projects can benefit from those tools, in particular, we will evaluate the use of the technology for our Plant Manufactured Protein project.” 

Dr Pascual Perez, Biogemma’s Research Coordinator: “The technology is designed to allow the introduction of genes in plants in a targeted area of the genome, which can significantly improve the speed at which modified plants can be developed, minimizing the transformation position effect, and thereby simplifying the regulatory process. This program is therefore of particular interest for the whole seed industry.  “

Evogene is a biotechnology company focused on developing high-value commercial products based on plant genomics.  The company is merging state-of-the-art predictive computational biology and molecular biology with the most advanced breeding technologies.  Evogene’s current product development portfolio is focused on:  improving abiotic stress tolerance and yield in key crops such as corn, soya, cotton, tomato and canola; enhancing fiber development in cotton; improving nitrogen use efficiency for key crops and plant manufacturing of therapeutic proteins. Evogene was founded in 2002 by Drs. Hagai Karchi and Rafi Meissner as a plant biotechnology spin-off of Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq: CGEN) and has a broad license to utilize certain Compugen technology in the agbio field.

Biogemma is a leading biotech company in Europe involved in Genomics applied to Field crops. The company is developing R&D programs with its partners, mainly in corn and wheat focused on biotic and abiotic stresses and specialty grain compounds.