An agreement was signed on 27 March 2008 in Paris by His Excellency Prof. Abdullah A. Alothman, Rector of King Saud University and Dr. Bernard CHARPENTIER, Director of International Relations INRA. The total budget is 1.132.000 Euro for four years period. This project is supervised by the Vice Rector of Knowledge Exchange and Technology Transfer at KSU.INRA-KSU crop biotechnology project aims to promote technological advances to manipulate endogenous plant genes without producing GMOs using in the first instance the tools developed by INRA.

In the first phase of this project will aim to select a list of crops relevant to the two countries on which INRA TILLING technology will be applied. They will select crop agronomic traits that are strategic for the agriculture of the two countries and because they have impact on functional properties of the harvested crop for use in food and industrial products. This Project will also provide a solid ground to promote collaboration between the two institutions.

Full agreement can be viewed here.