The investment in Lavie Bio will help Corteva access Lavie’s speciality corn and soy pipelines
Image: Corteva to invest in Evogene subsidiary. Photo: Courtesy of Ulrike Leone/Pixabay
American agriculture company Corteva has entered into an agreement with Evogene under which the former will invest in Evogene’s agriculture biological subsidiary Lavie Bio.
The deal also includes Corteva exchanging all the shares in the company’s subsidiary Taxon Biosciences along with an equity investment in Lavie Bio.
As consideration for the shares in Taxon Biosciences, the company will receive a 30% stake in Lavie Bio’s equity, while Evogene will hold the remaining 70% stake in Lavie.
The capabilities of Taxon Biosciences are expected to offer significant value to Lavie Bio and could speed up the company’s development of products.
Taxon’s assets including a large microbial collection and product candidate pipeline, will be integrated into Lavie’s pipeline, to accelerate Lavie’s ‘biology driven design’ approach and product development.
Lavie Bio will benefit from Corteva’s market access
The investment from Corteva will also support Lavie to provide the company with certain rights related to its corn and soy pipelines, allowing Lavie to benefit from Corteva’s market access.
Corteva Agriscience Crop Protection Business Platform President Susanne Wasson said: “This transaction demonstrates Corteva’s ongoing commitment to bringing to market new and differentiated technologies for our customers.”
“We are pleased to collaborate with Lavie Bio – a leader in the field of agriculture biologicals – as we continue to focus on accelerating commercialization of customer-centered innovation in this high-growth sector.”
Lavie Bio is focused on improving food quality, agricultural sustainability and productivity by developing new microbiome-based agriculture biological products.
Its approach uses a proprietary Computational Predictive Biology (CPB) platform, developed by Evogene, which uses big data and advanced informatics through discovery, optimisation and development stages in order to create microbiome-based products. Its pipeline includes crops such as corn and wheat along with speciality crops such as grapes.
Evogene president and CEO and Lavie Bio board chairman Ofer Haviv said: “We are extremely pleased with the combined Taxon acquisition and equity investment by Corteva, a world leader in the agricultural market, following close to two years of a co-development collaboration.
“By providing both additional complementary technologies along with potential go-to-market pathways, we believe this transaction will significantly enhance Lavie’s capabilities for the development and commercialization of next generation agriculture biological products.”