Mendel and MEDINA collaborate to mine natural product collections for agricultural applications

GRANADA, Spain and HAYWARD, Calif., July 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendel Biotechnology, Inc., and Fundacion MEDINA have entered into a license collaboration that will enable Mendel to identify novel biostimulant products. Biostimulants are a new category of agricultural chemicals derived from natural sources and applied as seed treatments or foliar applications to improve crop productivity through improved stress tolerance, water and nutrient use efficiency, and overall growth and yield. These natural products can be brought to the market more quickly and with lower regulatory costs than synthetic chemistries.

Under the agreement, MEDINA will provide Mendel with microbial extracts from elite culture collections. Mendel will run its proprietary screens on these collections to identify natural products with crop performance benefits.  Those that enhance drought tolerance and increase yield are targeted as the first products from these screens.

"We are very pleased to have identified a partner for the use of our collections to develop novel products for agriculture," said Olga Genilloud, MEDINA's Scientific Director. "Mendel's screening systems offer an outstanding platform to discover novel natural products from our unique collections of microorganisms."

"We are excited to access collections from MEDINA," said Neal Gutterson, CEO, Mendel. "The screening of their unique collections using Mendel's proprietary, high throughput Productivity Report Panel will yield new biostimulant products. These new products offer a sustainable, environmentally-friendly means of enhancing crop productivity in broad acre and specialty crops worldwide."

Mendel Biotechnology, Inc., headquartered in Hayward, California, is a leading plant science company meeting the needs of global agriculture. Since 1997, Mendel has deployed its plant gene regulatory network platform and proprietary tools to improve productivity, resource use efficiency and stress tolerance of agricultural crops. Mendel's platform has been used to identify technologies for next-generation yield traits in corn, soybean and other crops, and is now being used to discover and develop a pioneering class of biostimulants and synthetic performance chemistries. For more information, visit www.mendelbio.com.

Fundacion MEDINA is a non-profit research organization focused on the discovery of new compounds from microbial origin and innovative therapies for unmet medical needs. MEDINA is established in Granada, Spain, between the Government of Andalucia, the University of Granada and Merck Sharp and Dohme de Espana S.A. MEDINA owns one of the largest and most chemically diverse microbial Natural Products Libraries of extracts with a successful track record in delivering novel drug candidates in the pharmaceutical sector. Fundacion MEDINA has a unique expertise in natural products microbiology, chemistry and high throughput screening. MEDINA runs research programs to discover new drugs and biomarkers for unmet medical needs, as well as new products for agricultural and other industrial applications in partnership with academia and industry all over the world. For more information contact www.medinaandalucia.es.

Contact:

Fundacion MEDINA
Ruben Henriquez, Business Development, Tel. +34 958 993 965
email: [email protected]

Mendel
Greg Ikonen, Sr. VP, Corporate Development, Tel. + 1(510) 259-6007
email: [email protected]

SOURCE Mendel Biotechnology, Inc.