NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Makhteshim Agan Group and NRGENE today announced a collaboration directed at improving crop breeding.
The firms, both based in Israel, will partner on technology development, and Makhteshim will become a strategic investor in NRGENE under the terms of the deal.
Makhteshim said that the deal is in line with the creation of its Novel Agricultural Technologies Division that leverages expertise in and knowledge of agricultural needs and trends. NRGENE develops computational tools for the crop breeding industry and identifies genetic markers for complex traits controlled by multiple genes.
Its technology increases the success rate of breeding by enhancing the breeding process and accelerating the time it takes to bring to market elite varieties of crop plants, the firms said.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal "will support our focus to offer new solutions in the field of seeds and genomics," Yoav Zeif, Makhteshim's senior vice president of global products and marketing, said in the companies' joint statement. "By investing in — and cooperating with — NRGENE, we will help bring breeders tools that can boost their crop yields."