Ceres Licenses Bioinformatics Technology to KWS

- Crop development group to evaluate Persephone for its global product segments

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Sept. 29, 2015 -- Ceres, Inc. (CERE), an agricultural biotechnology company, today announced that KWS SAAT SE, a global seed developer with operations in over 70 counties, will evaluate Ceres' Persephone bioinformatics technology under a license agreement.

Originally developed for in-house use by Ceres, the Persephone system allows researchers to organize, store, access and explore a diverse array of DNA-related information in much the same way online mapping programs allow users to explore geographic regions and locations.

"We look forward to working with researchers at KWS to demonstrate how Persephone can help deliver complex genomic information directly to its diverse product development groups," said Tim Swaller, Ceres Vice President of Genomic Technologies.

Swaller noted that next generation sequencing technologies have substantially increased the amount and complexity of information generated in crop research and development. Despite the power of this information, it is often difficult to access and fully utilize throughout a research organization. "Persephone's capabilities and user experience is designed to allow more eyes on information that is often inaccessible today," said Swaller.

KWS, which develops, produces and markets seed for corn, sugarbeet, cereals, potatoes, canola and sunflower, has more than 1,000 employees involved in research, including large-scale genomic research programs across its major products lines.

Dr. Andreas Menze, Head of Bioinformatics at KWS, noted that the company's high-throughput bioinformatics platform generates continuously increasing volumes of data which must be made available for its research teams. "We plan to evaluate how Persephone can help disseminate data for the widest audience within KWS for discussion and discovery. We believe that broad accessibility to data will be a key driver of long-term novel discovery," said Dr. Menze.

In addition to crop research, Ceres markets Persephone to companies and institutions in the human and biomedical fields, where DNA-related information is analyzed and used in a similar manner to plants. The Persephone platform can be installed either within a customer's own IT infrastructure or in the cloud using Amazon Web Services. Ceres also offers a demo software version utilizing Amazon's infrastructure.

About Persephone
Persephone is a genome visualization platform marketed by Ceres, Inc. The technology platform allows researchers to store, access and explore DNA databases in much the same way online mapping programs allow users to explore geographic regions and places. Driven by dramatically lower costs, DNA sequencing is one of the most commonly used technologies in biological and medical research laboratories. Persephone has been designed to more fully utilize what has become an overload of data by enabling the rapid and easy visualization of large amounts of genomics data by experts and non-experts alike. The software features a number of optimizations to quickly fetch and render very large datasets. Persephone can display diverse datasets such as genetic maps, genomic sequences, gene models, synteny, QTLs, SNPs, RNA-Seq, and gene expression, among others. Persephone is a trademark of Ceres, Inc.

About Ceres
Ceres, Inc. is an agricultural biotechnology company that develops and markets seeds and traits to produce crops for animal feed, sugar and other markets. The company's advanced plant breeding and biotechnology technology platforms, which can increase crop productivity, improve quality, reduce crop inputs and improve cultivation on marginal land, have broad application across multiple crops, including food, feed, fiber and fuel crops. Ceres markets its seed products under its Blade brand.

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