Rehovot, Israel – July 15, 2013 – Evogene Ltd. (TASE: EVGN), a world leader in plant genomics underlying crop productivity for the food, feed and biofuel industries, today announced it hosted the President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres, at its greenhouse facilities, located in Na’an. The President, who was recently awarded for his contribution to the promotion of the biotechnology sector in Israel, chose to visit Evogene in order to learn more about the company’s activity with leading international seed companies to improve yield and resistance traits in agriculture crops.
During his visit, the President met with Evogene’s management and was presented with an overview of the company’s research and development capabilities. As part of his visit, the President conducted an on-site validation trial for yield improvement in model plants.
“Thanks to the development and innovation that is at the heart of Israeli agriculture, we have become a global leader in this field – a center for high-technology agriculture. As such, Israel can be the source for those technologies that will eventually help find a solution to world hunger,” stated the President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres.
“The world today is faced with the challenge of providing more food with fewer resources, mostly as a result of the rapid growth in human population and ongoing changes in nutritional habits of developing countries. In the last decade alone, the global demand for major crops such as corn, soybean, wheat and rice increased by more than 20%, and is expected to continue to grow by over 10% in the next five years,” said Ofer Haviv, President and CEO of Evogene.
“As a global leader in developing improved plant traits for a variety of crops, Evogene is working towards improving key traits such as yield and biotic stress tolerance in order to meet the increasing demand for food, feed and alternative fuels. Our unique ability to combine deep understanding of plant genomics with advanced capabilities in computational analysis of scientific data makes Evogene unique in our industry and an attractive proposition to world leading agriculture companies,” concluded Mr. Haviv.
-xxx-
About Evogene
Evogene is a world leading plant genomics company, utilizing a proprietary integrated technology infrastructure to enhance seed traits underlying crop productivity. Evogene offers a complete solution for crop productivity improvement through biotechnology and advanced breeding using a unique technology infrastructure that is based on deep scientific understandings of plant genomics and proprietary computational capabilities. 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), in key crops as corn, soybean, wheat and rice. In addition, Evogene has earlier stage operations in agriculture chemicals, and seeds focusing on second generation feedstock for biodiesel. The Company’s headquarters are located in Rehovot, Israel and is listed for trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE: EVGN). For additional information, please visit Evogene.
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 Israeli 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:
Karen Mazor, Evogene
Director, Public and Investor Relations
T: +972-54-2288039
karen.mazor@evogene.com
