NEW YORK — Dutch vegetable seed firm Bejo said this week that it has acquired a nonexclusive license to CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property from Corteva Agriscience and the Broad Institute.
Under the terms of the license, Bejo can use the IP in its agriculture research and commercial programs. The company noted, however, that it will use the genome-editing technology for research only pending changes in legislation.
"Gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 bring opportunities for accelerating Bejo's vegetable breeding programs," Bert Schrijver, director of R&D at Bejo, said in a statement. "They increase our understanding of genetics and provide tools to develop new traits such as abiotic stress and disease resistance."
In 2017, DowDuPont — which spun off its agriculture business as Corteva in 2019 — and the Broad Institute agreed to jointly offer nonexclusive licenses to their respective CRISPR-Cas9 IP for commercial agricultural research and product development. Licensees of the technology include Yield10 and Amfora.