New gene research could boost biofuels crop future

Evogene, a developer of improved plant traits for the industries including biofuels, has launched a model plant validation system for evaluation of candidate genes for monocot crops.

Monocot plants have one single embryonic seed leaf and include three of the most economically important food crops in corn, rice and wheat.

It claims this system, which uses Brachypodium as the monocot model plant, enables the evaluation of candidate genes performance for improving traits of interest such as yield and drought tolerance.

‘The successful implementation of our monocot validation system is an important additional achievement as we aim to provide the ag-biotech industry with a complete solution for plant trait improvement for food, feed and fuel through combining state of the art biotechnology and advanced breeding methods,’ says Hagai Karchi, Evogene's executive VP of R&D.