Sharsheret, Israel 
September 19, 2012

Plants grown from seeds treated by TraitUP™ exhibited positive results for disease control

Morflora, focused on innovative non-transgenic trait delivery technology for plant protection reports today that its TraitUP™ platform has been successfully used to deliver complex genetic material into seeds, providing protection for plants grown from treated seeds, against diseases and biotic stress.

This achievement demonstrates the maturity and power of the TraitUP™ technology to deliver traits effectively via seed treatment in a fast non-transgenic manner, positioning TraitUP as the technology of choice for companies which engage in functional genomics. Many of the industry players invest substantial resources seeking effective solutions to discover desirable traits in plants and crops, such as protecting crops against diseases and biotic stress, increasing yield and quality, and more. These extensive research operations rely on genetic transformation for the delivery of the desired genes into the target plants, and the testing of their expression and function in the plant of interest.

TraitUP™ is a key enabling technology for this market, as it can shorten the research process by years, offering a significantly faster alternative to genetic engineering. This is done without changing the plant genome, while expanding the scope of experiments. Utilizing TraitUP™ increases the immediate availability of seeds of the target crop for experiments in both quantity and variety, providing a proof of concept and allowing researchers to start experimenting on the desired target seed faster than ever.

"We are not transforming plants. We are transforming the industry," said Dotan Peleg, CEO of Morflora. "Our technology follows our vision of increasing and securing the global agricultural production, in a sustainable manner. Morflora’s technology will accelerate and broaden the trait research industry as the first step, and upon up-scaling of the seed treatment protocols for commercial use in mass-production of seeds, the next step will be to significantly reduce time and cost to market of numerous genetically optimized crops. The technology has not yet fully matured to meet all the challenges of our vision, yet it is making consistent progress towards fulfilling it. The recent achievement of delivering such a complex genetic construct into seeds without transforming the plants, while enabling them to express disease-tolerance, is a significant mile stone".

The research of the delivery of disease control genes using TraitUP™ seed treatment is held under collaborations with several institutes and researchers, including Prof. Ilan Sela and Prof. Haim Rabinowitch – who serve as Professional Board Members on Morflora's advisory board, Prof. Yaacov Katan - an expert in soil borne diseases from the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and experts from Volcani Center, the Israeli Agriculture Research Organization of the Ministry of Agriculture the Rural Development. These researches indicated that TraitUP™ treated vegetable seeds express specific antifungal trait, based on the delivery of the PRN genetic operon. Results demonstrate control of Fusaruim, Botrytis and other pathogens.

TraitUP™ has been recently short-listed in the crop protection focused AGROW awards competition in the 'Best Novel Agricultural Biotechnology' category. The company researchers together with hundreds of industry leaders will attend the award ceremony to be held on 7th November 2012 at London. Earlier this year Morflora was selected as a winner for Red Herring's Top 100 Europe award, a prestigious list honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the European business region.

Morflora develops generic and non transgenic trait delivery solutions into plants, to protect them from a wide variety of diseases, as well as introduce new desired traits for plant enhancement. The company targets the seed and plant treatment markets, offering technology and solutions to increase global crop yield and reduce dependency on chemical treatments and lengthy breeding processes.
Established in 2008, Morflora’s mission is to become a leading supplier of plant protection and enhancement solutions for a variety of agricultural markets.

Website: http://www.morflora.com/

Published: September 20, 2012