Wageningen, The Netherlands and St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
January 16, 2017

KeyGene and University of Minnesota jointly announced today that they have entered a strategic licensing agreement which allows UMN to offer KeyGene’s proprietary Sequence-Based Genotyping (SBG) along with a complete suite of genomics services to the academic community and the industry. The SBG technology allows rapid and costeffective discovery and scoring of genetic variation for improvement of crops without prior knowledge of their genomic sequences. By means of this technology genome-wide SNP discovery and genotyping is achieved in a single experiment. KeyGene has established a strong proprietary position on SBG with world-wide IP protection and this collaboration fully enables investigators from industry and academia to advance their research programs through SBG.

According to Kenneth Beckman, Director of the University of Minnesota Genomics Center: “The University of Minnesota Genomics Center is excited to now be able to offer Sequence-based Genotyping not only to our local researchers, but also to external customers in academia and industry. SBG will complement the PCR-based, arraybased, and mass-spec based genotyping platforms we currently operate, by permitting rapid turnaround, and very costeffective genotyping of any species, especially those for which there are no well-established reference maps or commercially-available targeted reagents. Our goal is to provide a complete sample-to-genotype workflow, ncluding bioinformatic analysis and high-throughput DNA extraction when needed. We plan to incrementally improve our SBG wet-lab and informatic workflows in order to lower costs and improve coverage, and to thereby enable increasingly ambitious population-genetic and breeding strategies for our users.”

"KeyGene’s leadership in the industry stands on the foundations of its core beliefs in innovation and translation. SBG is a transformative technology that can rapidly advance breeding programs across the globe. We are proud to make SBG available through UMGC to foster research and drive further discoveries in crop, animal and life sciences” said Fayaz Khazi, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of KeyGene USA.

About KeyGene
The crop innovation company
KeyGene is the go-to AgBiotech company for higher crop yield & quality. With our intellectual capital, solution driven approach and collaborative spirit, we work for the future of global agriculture with partners in the AgriFood sector. Using our proprietary technologies and non-GM approaches, we support customers with the development of new and improved crops. Our goal is to help organizations with their toughest R&D challenges, combining our cutting edge breeding technologies, bioinformatics & data science expertise and plant-based trait platforms.

About The University of Minnesota Genomics Center (UMGC)
The University of Minnesota Genomics Center (UMGC) is the central genomics core facility for the University of Minnesota system. With a staff of roughly 30 scientists, and a budget of over $7M per year, the UMGC carries out over a thousand projects annually on behalf of UMN scientists as well as academic and industry researchers across the U.S and overseas. In addition to genotyping,
the UMGC offers a broad suite of genomic services, including epigenomics, single-cell genomics, microbiome services, and other more customized approaches.

Website: http://www.keygene.com

Published: January 16, 2017