Evogene subsidiary completes three years of successful castor seed field trials

Evogene Ltd. (EVGN), a plant genomics company specializing in enhancing crop productivity for the food, feed and biofuel industries, recently announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Evofuel Ltd., has completed three years of successful field trials in Brazil for the development of castor bean as an alternative feedstock for production of biodiesel and other industrial uses.

The field trials, which were conducted in cooperation with SLC Agrícola S.A., one of Brazil’s largest landowners and leading agriculture businesses, demonstrated strong yield performance of Evofuel’s proprietary castor seed varieties under rain-fed conditions in northeast Brazil, and supported the use of castor seed as a competitive biodiesel feedstock. Moreover, Evofuel’s castor seed varieties have the potential of being highly attractive to the traditional industries currently using castor oil, such as the lubricant and biopolymer industries, which today face the challenge of castor oil price instability.

Based on three consecutive years of successful yield results, Evofuel expects to initiate commercialization of its proprietary castor seeds in 2016, following advanced product development and pre-commercial trials which are targeted to begin next year.

The collaboration with SLC is aimed at developing castor as a rotation crop with soybean, with the sowing of the castor seeds taking place after the harvesting of the soybean. Being grown during a period in which rainfall levels are typically not sufficient to cultivate other crops, castor production under this model does not compete with the production of staple crops, and provides farmers with a high value crop offering and additional revenue source.

“We are excited to complete our proof of concept stage demonstrating three years of strong yield performance. These results are especially encouraging seeing as the past two years were relatively dry, with approximately 50% of the average rainfall,” said Assaf Oron, General Manager of Evofuel. “Despite these challenging conditions, we were able to achieve the required yield performance, positioning our castor varieties as an attractive and scalable crop, especially for rotation in areas where the soybean counter season leaves local farmers with limited cultivation options.”

“Castor is a high value crop that we believe has the potential to diversify our crop portfolio and crop rotation systems, especially in the Cerrado region in Brazil, the county's agriculture frontier," said Aurélio Pavinato, CEO of SLC Agrícola.

SLC Agrícola operates over 280,000 hectares of soybean, corn and cotton across Brazil. Evofuel estimates that under the soybean rotation model, and leveraging SLC’s footprint, the potential land area in Brazil for economically viable commercial production of castor seeds is over five million hectares.