BGI, Gates Foundation Sign Ag Development Agreement

By CnAgri2012-09-26 19:35:04 Print

BGI, which claims to be the world's largest genomics organization, announced that it and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form a collaboration on global health and agricultural development with the goal of achieving common objectives in health and agricultural development.

Pursuant to the MOU, BGI and the Gates Foundation will collaborate on both a strategic level and a specific project level. Collaboration on specific projects will leverage the Gates Foundation's agriculture and global health program knowledge and networks with BGI's sequencing and genomics capabilities to achieve the goal of significantly reducing poverty and/or improving health outcomes in the developing world.

Strategic objectives include identifying a program of work and collaboration across global health and agricultural development and to conduct work together on initial projects with near-term potential to further develop the working relationship between BGI and the Gates Foundation.

The agreement supports the prompt and broad dissemination of information from collaboration projects. It also supports broad access to any technology arising from a project. These technologies will be required to be made available at a reasonable cost to the poor.