Tel Aviv, Israel
August 15, 2011

Morflora, focused on innovative nontransgenic trait introduction technology for plant protection and enhancement, announced today that the company has validated its TraitUP™ technology and its generic applicability via the introduction and successful expression of new traits into numerous types of vegetables and plants.

Utilizing TraitUP™, Morflora delivers almost any gene into any plant in a fast non-transgenic treatment. Morflora has tested the introduction and expression of new traits in over 40 plant species of 14 botanical families, including soybean, wheat, sweet corn, tomato, pepper, citrus, grapevines and more. TraitUP™ platform has successfully delivered various reporter and functional genes including an entire operon affecting a complete metabolic pathway in plants. This has led Morflora to believe that the technology can be successfully used to introduce any gene into any plant, positioning TraitUP™ as a first of its kind revolutionary solution for crop protection and enhancement.

As the world population is expected to grow to 9.2 billion in 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) claims in its Save and Grow Report (June 2011) that the world’s only viable option to feed the growing population is to promote sustainable crop production intensification (http://www.fao.org/ag/save-and-grow/). The FAO recommends economizing on agrochemicals usage and utilizing more natural and healthy means to increase yield. Morflora’s research and development efforts are focused on this pressing need to offer technology which would increase crop yield and production via fast and non-transgenic means.

Morflora, an innovator in the agricultural biotechnology industry, develops technology to help growers and seed companies worldwide promote sustainable agriculture and provide protection against common diseases and threats to crops via non-transgenic effective solutions. The TraitUP™ technology was first discovered during a research conducted at the research lab of acclaimed plant virologists Prof. Ilan Sela from the Hebrew University. Scientists discovered highly efficient vectors for silencing and expression of genes, and these vectors, commercially referred to as TraitUP™, were scientifically named IL-60 and 1470 plasmids. Morflora and Yissum Research Development Company, the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, co-own the TraitUP™ patents, and Morflora holds an exclusive license to commercialize the technology.

Morflora’s achievements to date stem from continuous efforts to answer the challenges and threats presented by the decrease in food and crop production worldwide.

"We are excited by the global validation of TraitUP™ as a generic platform which delivers almost any gene to any plant”, says Dotan Peleg, CEO, Morflora. “In addition to our extensive research into
the capabilities of TraitUP™, internally and under sponsored research conducted at the Hebrew University, we’ve received positive affirmations from several research institutes worldwide, successfully delivering numerous genes into various plants”.

Until today, growers and seed companies wishing to introduce sustainable genes into plants had to rely on breeding methods which can take up anytime between three to seven years to develop and
express in each plant species. As opposed to breeding technologies, Morflora’s TraitUP™ offers non-transgenic solution in which traits are expressed within a few days.

“Thinking of trait delivery in terms of days instead of years, and offering a treatment with results similar to breeding, is an idea which will lead to a revolution in modern agriculture”, Peleg adds.

”Our recent validation is the corner stone required to fulfill such a revolution. Particularly, we are looking to further advance the development of TraitUP’s unprecedented capabilities for plant
protection opportunities. We have initiated experiments to validate the platform’s capacity to offer protection against viruses and diseases that cause huge crop losses worldwide”.

Morflora develops generic and non-transgenic trait introduction 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: August 15, 2011