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Evogene Subsidiary and Embrapa to Cooperate in Brazil

The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and Evogene Ltd. announced the signing of a joint research agreement between Embrapa and Evofuel Ltd., Evogene’s wholly-owned subsidiary, for the advancement of castor cultivation in Brazil. The cooperation will primarily focus on technologies for controlling castor-specific diseases as well as practices for castor cultivation in rotation with soybean.

The global market for castor oil has tightened over the past few years with industrial demand, in Brazil and internationally, exceeding availability and production. Presently, castor is cultivated on approximately 100,000 hectares (approximately 250,000 acres) in Brazil, an area that can substantially increase with the introduction of advanced varieties and new-modern cultivation practices, as being addressed by Evofuel in the past years.

The agreement is set to bring Embrapa’s substantial experience in research and development of castor together with Evofuel’s proprietary castor varieties, which are adapted to mechanized harvest and modern agricultural protocols, to offer Brazilian growers a full-scale solution for an economically viable, sustainable, and large-scale cultivation of castor.

Cultivation of castor in rotation with soybean (second crop or ‘safrinha’ crop) consists of planting Evofuel's advanced castor varieties after harvesting the soybean crop. The target area for this rotation system is in the region of MATOPIBA (States of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia) in the northeast and central regions of Brazil, where approximately five million hectares (over 12 million acres) are estimated to be suitable for castor cultivation.

“Embrapa has been working for three decades on castor research and development in Brazil, achieving remarkable progress in many areas, including fertilization, weed and disease management, added value to by-products, and genetic resources,” said Liv Severino, Chief of Research and Development of Embrapa Cotton. “The joint work with Evofuel will promote synergy between the two partners and will consolidate our commitment to turn castor into a highly viable crop for Brazil’s expanding agriculture.”

The collaboration with Embrapa follows three years of successful field trials of Evofuel’s castor varieties in Brazil. The trials demonstrated the suitability and economic benefits of growing Evofuel's proprietary castor varieties as a second crop with soybean for production of oil feedstock for biofuels and other industrial uses. In March this year, Evofuel announced an agreement for the commercial production of castor in 2016 with SLC Agricola, one of Brazil’s largest landowners and agriculture businesses.