NEW YORK, Dec. 4 – Paradigm Genetics has entered a deal to acquire Celera’s AgGen plant genomics and genotyping business in a stock deal valued at $2.1 million, the companies said Tuesday.
Under the terms of the deal, Celera will receive 422,459 Paradigm shares. Paradigm closed at $4.87 in trading on the Nasdaq Monday.
Celera will also share service revenues with Paradigm. Further details and specifics about the revenue sharing plan were not available.
Celera said that the sale of its AgGen unit would allow the company to focus on its core businesses.
"By working with Paradigm, we should realize value from services for the plant-based agricultural industry, while focusing our internal resources on activities related to Celera's therapeutic discovery and online businesses," Craig Venter, Celera’s chief scientific officer, said in a statement.
John Ryals, Paradigm’s CEO, said the acquisition would give his company the ability to provide a full range of genomics services for the agriculture industry, “from gene sequencing, genotyping, and marker-assisted breeding to gene function discovery, gene expression analysis, phenotypic analysis and biochemical profiling.”
Once the acquisition is completed, AgGen will go by the name ParaGen.