NEW YORK – BGI-Research, part of the BGI Group in China, and Dutch agro-food research company KeyGene said on Tuesday that they have forged a collaboration to apply BGI-Research’s spatial transcriptomics technology for plant breeding.
Financial terms of the joint effort were not disclosed.
As part of the partnership, the companies said they will focus on identifying genes involved in the interaction between plants and pathogens using BGI Research’s recently introduced spatial enhanced resolution omics-sequencing (Stereo-Seq) technology.
"Such leads will form the basis for the development of crop varieties containing novel and durable resistances against pathogens, thus supporting sustainable food production around the globe," the firms said in a joint statement.
"Our collaboration with KeyGene gives us great opportunities to study the value of Stereo-Seq for plant research and plant breeding in industry and the academic world around the globe," said BGI-Research CEO Xiaodong Fang in a statement.