Evogene

Evogene Ltd.
Public
Traded as TASE: EVGN
NYSE: EVGN
Industry Agrotechnology
Founded 2002
Founder Dr. Hagai Karchi and Dr. Rafi Meissner
Headquarters Rehovot, Israel
Key people
 Martin Gerstel, Chairman of Board, Ofer Haviv, President & CEO
Revenue Increase 3.9 million dolar (First quarter, 2014)
Decrease 2.6 million dolar (First quarter, 2014)
Decrease 0.4 million dolar (First quarter, 2014)
Number of employees
 200 (2014)
Subsidiaries Evofuel
Website www.evogene.com

Evogene Ltd. (Hebrew: אבוג'ן‎) is an Israeli company engaged in research and development for improving crop quality, productivity and economics for the food, feed and biofuel 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), in key crops as corn, soybean, wheat and rice.

Activity

Evogene focuses on four key fields for its future growth: I. Improving yield and abiotic stress tolerance traits for key agricultural crops. II.Improving disease, insects and other biotic stress resistance traits III. agrochemistry (the interface between chemicals and plants) IV. Develop non-food feedstock for biodiesel through its subsidiary, Evofuel.

The company employs about 200 workers in various fields, of them 85% are engaged in research and development. The multidisciplinary team includes computer experts, biologists, geneticists, agronomists and others. Evogene has its main offices and compound of laboratories in Rehovot, Israel. The company also has greenhouses and other plant growing sites throughout Israel.

The company cooperates with some of the leading seed companies around the world, among them, Syngenta, DuPont, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, in order to develop and commercialize its technology.

Technology

Evogene's performs the biotechnological procedure of seed development in several stages. For this end, the company has been developing computational technology for detecting genes and DNA sequences that could improve one or more of the certain plant's qualities. The company's method of work starts with mapping and prioritizing the genes, then examining the impact of these genes and gene sequences on the plant in order to improve actual features of the certain plant. The company focuses on agricultural and industrial needs and also on the alternative energy industry.

As of December 2012, Evogene has four main technologies: ATHLETE™ - Evogene's proprietary computational technology for plant gene discovery; Gene2Product™ - a number of proprietary computational genomic components to improve trait efficacy and the probability of successful development of biotechnology seed products; Evobreed™ - a computational technology for discovery of molecular markers to enhance plant breeding; and PoinTar™ - a computational platform for target discovery, aimed at identifying proteins that are important to plant function and performance. The company plans to enter new fields, such as RNA-based gene regulation and to explore the benefits of reducing the impact of certain genes.

Evogene as a public company

The company's shares are traded on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and is a member of the TA-100 Index, the TA BlueTech-50 Index and the TA-Biomed Index. The company does not have a controlling stock holder: Monsanto holds 9% of the company's shares, Leon Recanati holds 5%, Compugen holds 3%, Chairman Martin Gerstel holds 2% and the rest 81% are held by the general public. In June 2013, the company submitted a draft prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ahead of its public offering at the New York Stock Exchange. The Shares began trading on November 2013 .

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