ISRAEL – Corteva Inc. plans to invest in Israel based Lavie Bio Ltd. that seeks to develop and commercialize environmentally friendly products for agricultural production.
Corteva’s investment in Lavie Bio will include the exchange of all shares of Corteva’s subsidiary Taxon Biosciences along with an equity investment in Lavie Bio. The company receive about 30% of Lavie Bio’s equity
Evogene, Ltd., the parent company of Lavie Bio, will hold about 70% of Lavie Bio’s equity while all Taxon Biosciences’ assets, which include a microbial collection, will be integrated in Lavie Bio’s pipeline.
Corteva, which was part of the DowDuPont spin-off earlier this year, will have certain rights with respect to Lavie Bio’s corn and soy pipelines, reports World Grain.
“This transaction demonstrates Corteva’s ongoing commitment to bringing to market new and differentiated technologies for our customers,” said Susanne Wasson, crop protection business platform president for Corteva.
“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 uses a proprietary Computational Predictive Biology platform to help the company improve food quality, agricultural sustainability and productivity by developing microbiome-based agriculture biological products.
Lavie Bio recently developed three biostimulant product candidates, LAV211, LAV212 and LAV 213, that demonstrated wheat yield improvements over a two-year period.
“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,” said Ofer Haviv, president and chief executive for Evogene.
Lavie Bio already is in a partnership with Corteva to develop biostimulant products for corn. Corteva has a heritage portfolio of DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences.
The agriculture biologicals sector is a growing segment of the agriculture inputs market, says the company official.
“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,” Haviv, who is also chairman of the board for Lavie Bio added.
