WILMINGTON, DEL., and REHOVOT, ISRAEL — Corteva Agriscience (NYSE: CTVA), a pure-play
agriculture company, and AgPlenus, a subsidiary of Evogene Ltd., (NASDAQ: EVGN,
TASE: EVGN), announced that they have entered into a multi-year collaboration
for the development of novel herbicides.
The collaboration will combine Corteva’s work in crop protection product discovery and development with AgPlenus’
knowledge in designing effective and sustainable crop protection products using
predictive biology.
Corteva and AgPlenus will
address the rise of global weed resistance, created in-part by the absence of
new modes of action (MoAs) for weed control over the past 30 years. Products
resulting from the collaboration will enter a multi-billion-dollar market.
“Weed resistance presents a serious
challenge for today’s farmers,” said Neal Gutterson, senior vice president and chief
technology officer, Corteva Agriscience. “So much has changed since the last
MOAs were identified in the early 1990s. It’s time to find new solutions; our
collaboration with AgPlenus positions us well to do that.”
Under the terms of the
agreement, Corteva will apply its crop protection research and development
expertise, and AgPlenus will apply a computational platform to optimize several
of AgPlenus’ chemical families. Such chemical families have already been
validated for herbicidal activity and are connected to new MoAs. Corteva holds
an exclusive license from AgPlenus to commercialize herbicides based on these
chemical families. Additional financial terms of the collaboration were not
disclosed.
“We are very excited with this new
collaboration with Corteva Agriscience, a pioneer in the development of novel
herbicides.,” said Eran Kosover,
AgPlenus’ CEO. “This collaboration will focus on optimizing our
leading chemical families putting us in an excellent position to pursue our
target of developing novel herbicides. I am confident that AgPlenus’ unique
approach in the development of herbicides, alongside Corteva Agriscience’s extensive
scientific and market know-how, will lead to new and sustainable innovation in
the herbicides market.”
