Recently, AgPlenus, a subsidiary of the Israeli biotechnology company Evogene, announced that it and Corteva have made significant progress in developing new herbicide molecules and successfully identified a new family of molecules that exhibit herbicidal effects through a new mechanism of action, APCO-12.
The cooperation between the two parties began in 2020, aiming to use AgPlenus' computing technology platform and Corteva's product research and development capabilities to develop new molecules with a new herbicidal action mechanism. Next, the collaboration will focus on leveraging AgPlenus' cutting-edge computing technology, powered by Evogene's ChemPass AI technology engine and Corteva's industry-leading R&D capabilities, to optimize identified molecular classes into commercial-grade products.
In recent years, weed resistance to existing herbicides has become a major problem in global agriculture. This is partly due to the lack of new mechanism-of-action herbicides in the past 30 years. Most commercially available herbicides are based on small molecules that inhibit target proteins in weeds, causing weed death. The collaboration between AgPlenus and Corteva was launched to address this issue. Both parties stated that this cooperation is expected to accelerate the launch of a new class of herbicide products with a new mechanism of action and provide innovative solutions to farmers around the world.
Source: AgroPages
