DuPont and Evogene Ltd. announced a research collaboration yesterday to improve drought stress tolerance primarily in corn and soybeans.  Under the agreement, DuPont business Pioneer Hi-Bred has exclusive rights to several genes discovered by Evogene for improving these traits.  The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“Drought has an enormous impact on crop productivity and quality as well as cost of production.  It’s the one agronomic pressure that negatively affects growers in every country around the world, every year,” said Bill Niebur , vice president, DuPont Crop Genetics Research and Development.  “We look forward to creatively combining our technologies to develop superior products that use water more efficiently, leading to greater productivity, profitability and sustainability of agricultural systems.”

Drought causes global crop losses in excess of USD 8 billion annually.  The impact of drought will likely increase, based on predictive models used to study the effects of ongoing climate changes.  Improving corn and soybean tolerance to drought stress will help maximize grower yield and income, as well as provide more grain for the food, feed, fuel and materials value chains. 

The candidate genes were discovered by Evogene's most advanced in-silico gene discovery technology called the "ATHLETE."  Pioneer will evaluate the licensed genes in its elite corn and soybean germplasm to measure the benefit in its commercial products.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Pioneer, a world leader in developing and supplying corn and soybean seed varieties.  This collaboration reinforces the value of our gene discovery tools and will help us determine the utility of our candidate genes,” said Ofer Haviv, president and CEO, Evogene.  “This collaboration is a significant milestone for us.”

Pioneer is taking multiple approaches to drought tolerance that include conventional breeding, molecular breeding and transgenic programs.  The collaboration with Evogene is complementary to the drought tolerance work already under way at Pioneer.