Affymetrix and BGI Enter Strategic Collaboration

Affymetrix, Inc. announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with BGI to enter into a strategic co-development and co-marketing collaboration. The non-exclusive partnership will aim to develop and commercialize a portfolio of plant, crop, and livestock microarrays for genotyping analysis, spanning applications such as marker-assisted trait selection, parentage, quality control, and traceability.

The global agricultural community will benefit from this partnership through cost-effective and high-throughput solutions that leverage BGI's vast catalog of high-quality sequencing data and bioinformatics analyses from plant, crop, and livestock genomes and Affymetrix' expertise as a leader in microarray technology. The collaboration will provide scientists with access to a broad range of well-annotated and inter- and intra-species bio-diverse genomic markers from the 1000 Plant and Animal Reference Genomes Project, initiated by BGI in 2010.

"We are pleased to be working with BGI to expand the use of molecular tools in agriculture," said Dr. Frank Witney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Affymetrix. "This is a fast developing field that is key to accelerating critical discoveries that will improve the yield and nutritional value of food and feed around the globe."

"The combination of BGI's next-generation sequencing platforms, bioinformatics capabilities and sequencing database, and Affymetrix' advanced genotyping technology will help advance the application of genomic selection to scientists seeking to improve outcomes in breeding plants, crops, and livestock," said Dr. Jun Wang, Executive Director of BGI. "We look forward to making plant and animal sequencing data more widely available to the global agricultural community."