BASF has signed a three-year collaboration deal with Israeli plant technology company Evogene to discover and develop novel herbicides.

Evogene will use its computational biology to identify potential candidate chemicals to serve as the basis for next generation herbicides. BASF will use its proprietary advanced plant platform to screen the candidates to validate their biological effects on weeds. Successful candidates will be further developed by BASF.

Jordi Tormo, vice president global research herbicides & services at BASF Crop Protection, said weed resistance is a pressing issue for many growers around the world and the partnership is a great opportunity to combine Evogene’s expertise in plant physiology and computational biology with BASF’s strength in lead structure optimization and product development.

BASF said it currently offers one of the industry’s strongest and most diverse weed control portfolios. Evogene combines a deep understanding of plant science with advanced computational tools for the analysis of big data sets. The company discovered and successfully validated a set of plant targets in July this year which will be included in the collaboration with BASF.

Additional details of the agreement were not disclosed.