Wageningen, The Netherlands and Udine, Italy
June 19, 2014

Keygene N.V. and IGA Technology Services announced today that they have entered into a license agreement in the field of Sequence-Based Genotyping (SBG). Under the agreement IGA Technology Services obtains a non-exclusive license for the commercial offering and use of KeyGene’s patented SBG technology in certain fields of use. The SBG patents protect worldwide methods including RADSeq, GBS and related methods which allow discovery and scoring of genetic markers without genome sequence information in a cost-effective way. These methods are very powerful to characterize breeding germplasm diversity and develop markers for improvement of agronomic traits.

“We are very pleased with licensing IGA Technology Services in this important research field of nextgeneration sequencing based genetic marker analysis. The ability to perform genetic marker discovery and genotyping simultaneously finds widespread use in a huge range of species. This accelerates the genetic improvement of our crops, farm animals and micro-organisms”, said Michiel van Eijk, CSO of KeyGene. “In the light of further advancement of KeyGene’s licensing strategy, we welcome the use of our proprietary SBG technology by commercial service providers such as IGA Technology Services.”

‘Through this agreement with Keygene N.V., we are very pleased to expand our services portfolio to include Sequence-Based Genotyping methods’ said Federica Cattonaro, CEO of IGA Technology Services. ‘This technology has the ability to unleash the fast and massive throughput of next-generation sequencing platforms to large-scale genetics approaches such as linkage mapping, population studies and fingerprinting, in either sequenced or completely unexplored genomes’. Davide Scaglione, Senior Researcher at IGA Technology Services, commented, ‘Marker discovery and genotyping can now reside within a single experiment. Unlike array-based technologies, initial investment can now scale with sample number and benefit from cost reduction of NGS technologies and provide ascertainment bias-free genotyping solutions’.

About KeyGene
25 years of sustainable molecular genetic innovations for crop improvement KeyGene is a privately owned, innovative molecular genetics Ag Biotech company with a primary focus on the improvement of 6F (Food, Feed, Fiber, Fuel, Flowers and Fun) crops. KeyGene’s passion is a Green Gene Revolution approach to explore and exploit natural genetic variation in vegetable and other 6F crops. KeyGene delivers sustainable responses to the world’s needs for yield stability & quality of vegetable and field crops. KeyGene supports its strategic partners with cutting edge breeding technologies and plant-based trait platforms, with more than 135 employees from all over the world, with state of the art facilities and equipment. KeyGene has its headquarters in Wageningen, the Netherlands, a subsidiary in Rockville, USA and a Joint Lab with the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences in Shanghai, China.

About IGA Technology Services
IGA Technology Services is the leading Italian provider of genomic research services using Illumina Next Generation Sequencing technology. As Illumina Certified Service Provider (CSPro since 2009), IGA-TS offers a wide range of NGS services, such as DNA-seq, RNA-seq methyl-seq, on a whole range of organisms: plants, humans, other animals, and microorganisms. The company’s core business is sequencing using Illumina technology coupled with NextGen sequencing data analysis.
The company has direct access to the scientific and technological resources of its founder, the Institute of Applied Genomics (IGA), which has gained an outstanding reputation in plant genomic research through participation in several genome sequencing projects of plant species (e.g. grape, peach, citrus, Norway spruce) in cooperation with international sequencing centers and universities. The company is based in Udine (Italy).

Website: http://www.keygene.com

Published: June 19, 2014