New Delhi, India, May 25, 2018: Crystal Crop Protection Limited has signed a Letter of Intent with KeyGene at a high-profile trade mission headed by the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in New Delhi. Crystal Crop Protection Limited, an R&D based crop protection manufacturing and marketing company has recently acquired Indian grain sorghum, fodder sorghum(SSG) and pearl millet seeds business (including their germplasms, plant variety protection applications and registrations and market authorizations) from Syngenta India Limited.
Crystal Crop has a breeding program with germplasm in cereal and fibre crops.KeyGene and Crystal envisage to explore a strategic collaboration to discover new traits for increasing crop yields and combatting climate change. The effort will be to develop products through sharing of high-tech and novel breeding technologies that benefit the farmers to increase their farm profitability.
“KeyGene is one of the global leaders in crop innovation and we are excited to explore models in which we can leverage our expertise, and KeyGene’s next generation technologies and trait innovation platforms to develop tolerant and more resilient crops for the Indian market”, says Ankur Aggarwal, Managing Director of Crystal Crop Protection Limited.
“Indian seed companies can gain a lot by embracing innovation, enabling acceleration in their breeding and development of traits, and bringing novel products to farmers. We are excited to explore this research collaboration with Crystal Crop to enhance their breeding programs using our proprietary knowledge, know-how and innovation platforms for accelerating and developing novel non-GM products for Crystal’s seed business”, says Arjen van Tunen, CEO of KeyGene.