NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – KeyGene announced today that it has signed new collaboration agreements with Phenome Networks and the University of Minnesota, and that it has extended its existing partnership with Genalice.
KeyGene and the University of Minnesota said that they have entered a strategic licensing agreement which allows UMN to offer KeyGene’s Sequence-Based Genotyping, and associated genomics services to the academic community and to industry.
KeyGene's SBG technology allows for genome-wide SNP discovery and genotyping for improvement of crops in a single experiment.
University of Minnesota Genomics Center Director Kenneth Beckman said in a statement that SBG will complement the PCR-based, array-based, and mass-spec based genotyping platforms UMN currently offers by "permitting rapid turnaround, and very cost-effective genotyping of any species, especially those for which there are no well-established reference maps or commercially-available targeted reagents."
KeyGene also announced today a new strategic partnership with Phenome Networks, under which Phenome has provided a license to KeyGene for its plant breeding software PhenomeOne, to help support KeyGene’s breeding of rubber-producing dandelion plants. KeyGene has in turn provided a license to Phenome for its CropPedia genomics platform for big data integration and analysis in rice, the companies said.
In addition, both parties have agreed to promote each other's software products during interactions with their business partners in the seed industry, and they plan to explore joint development of new software that combines and expands the capabilities of both PhenomeOne and CropPedia.
Finally, KeyGene and informatics firm Genalice said today that they are extending their existing strategic partnership for another three years. The companies teamed up in 2013 in a partnership aimed at improving plant DNA analysis.
Arjen van Tunen, CEO of KeyGene said in a statement, that the ongoing partnership "enables both parties to benefit from the further development and use of multi-genome analysis software for AgroFood applications."
No specific financial terms were disclosed for any of the three deals.