Evogene, Marrone Bio Innovations CEOs participate in AgriFest 2015 panel

The chief operating officers for Evogene, Ltd., and Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. participated in the "Profiling Tomorrow's Ag Solutions" panel discussion during AgriFest 2015 in Israel today.

As part of the discussion, Ofer Haviv, of Evogene. and Pam Marrone, of Marrone Bio Innovations, discussed the roles that they play in the global agricultural industries. The later discussed the role of biological pesticides, their applications and effects, and how they improve on plant health and overall yield. The former discussed the company's many partnerships with agricultural companies, and their efforts in enhancing seed traits and other measures of development. 

"This is an exciting time for AG tech as there is an explosion of innovation all along the food chain from farm to fork," Marrone said in advance of the panel discussion. "Collaboration is critical to driving innovation, and we are very pleased with the results of our partnership with Evogene. We are making good progress toward developing novel modes of action for insect control as our collaboration is enabling us to leverage our discovery and development strategy to explore an even wider range of microbes with novel insecticidal genes."

Both CEOs also detailed a multi-year agreement for improved methods of insect control, and the further development and commercialization of these products. 

"Only a few months into the collaborative work plan, we have already completed the selection process, with the first set of candidate microbes showing high efficacy in testing," Haviv said. "These microbial candidates will form the key targets for the upcoming gene discovery round, which will be conducted utilizing Evogene's proprietary computational platforms."