AgroPages-Evogene officially opens research and development facility in U.S-Agricultural news

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Evogene Ltd. will officially open its new Research and Development facility in St. Louis with an event highlighting “Driving Innovation for Agriculture”. The new facility is located at the Bio-Research and Development Growth (BRDG) Park, on the campus of The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, a world leading center for innovation in agriculture.

In addition to Mr. Ofer Haviv, Evogene’s President and CEO and Dr. James Presnail, the Site Head for Evogene, senior officials from Evogene and The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center will be participating in the opening celebration.

Within its crop protection area of activities, Evogene is a leader in the integration and analysis of vast amounts of microbial genomic data, in order to identify genes that can be specifically toxic to insects and fungi that lead to substantial crop damage and losses.

In its initial activities, the new St. Louis facility will support these efforts, providing data generation experiments, functional screening and validation of discovered genes in biological systems, as well as establishing transformation and validation capabilities for biotechnology soybean.

Ofer Haviv, Evogene's President and CEO commented, "The site will initially be focused on our growing crop protection activities, primarily the Company's ongoing insect control product programs and collaborations for controlling Coleopteran, Lepidopteran and Hemipteran - key crop damaging insects - and we expect to expand its activities in the future to additional Evogene areas of focus, in both crop enhancement and crop protection.”