REHOVOT, Israel, Nov. 19, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evogene Ltd. (NYSE: EVGN ) (TASE: EVGN ), a leading company for the improvement of crop productivity and economics for the food and feed industries, will officially open its new Research and Development facility in St. Louis today with an event highlighting “Driving Innovation for Agriculture”. The new facility is located at the Bio-Research and Development Growth (BRDG) Park, on the campus of The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, a world leading center for innovation in agriculture. In addition to Mr. Ofer Haviv, Evogene’s President and CEO and Dr. James Presnail, the Site Head for Evogene, senior officials from Evogene and The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center will be participating in the opening celebration.
Ofer Haviv, Evogene's President and CEO commented, "We are pleased to be officially opening today our first R&D site located in the U.S, and in particular on the Campus of the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. This important expansion brings us geographically much closer to both world leading companies and research centers in our industry and to key target markets for our Company. The site will initially be focused on our growing crop protection activities, primarily the Company's ongoing insect control product programs and collaborations for controlling Coleopteran, Lepidopteran and Hemipteran - key crop damaging insects - and we expect to expand its activities in the future to additional Evogene areas of focus, in both crop enhancement and crop protection.”
Within its crop protection area of activities, Evogene is a leader in the integration and analysis of vast amounts of microbial genomic data, in order to identify genes that can be specifically toxic to insects and fungi that lead to substantial crop damage and losses. In its initial activities, the new St. Louis facility will support these efforts, providing data generation experiments, functional screening and validation of discovered genes in biological systems, as well as establishing transformation and validation capabilities for biotechnology soybean.
About Evogene Ltd.: Evogene (NYSE: EVGN ) (TASE: EVGN ) is a leading company for the improvement of crop productivity and economics for the food and feed industries. The Company has strategic collaborations with world-leading agricultural companies to develop improved seed traits in relation to yield and a-biotic stress (such as tolerance to drought), and biotic stress (such as resistance to disease and nematodes), in key crops as corn, soybean, wheat and rice, and is also focused on the research and development of new products for crop protection (such as weed control). In addition, the Company has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Evofuel, developing seeds for second generation feedstock for biodiesel. For more information, please visit www.evogene.com .
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" relating to future events. These statements may be identified by words such as "may", “expects”, "intends", “anticipates”, “plans”, “believes”, “scheduled”, “estimates” or words of similar meaning. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions, describe opinions about future events, involve certain risks and uncertainties which are difficult to predict and are not guarantees of future performance. Therefore, actual future results, performance or achievements of Evogene may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, many of which beyond Evogene's control, including, without limitation, those risk factors contained in Evogene’s reports filed with the appropriate securities authority. Evogene disclaims any obligation or commitment to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or developments or changes in expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions.
Contact: Sigal Fattal, Evogene Chief Financial Officer Sigal.Fattal@evogene.com
