Agriculture & Horticulture

Biography

Ilan Chet serves as Chairman of Advisory Board of Aquagro Fund and Aqua-Agro Fund, L.P. He serves as a Director at FertiSeeds Ltd. Prof. Chet served as a Member of the Board of Directors of Makhteshim Agan Industries Ltd. Prof. He also serves as a Member of the Advisory Board of Pimi Agro Cleantech, Inc., Mitam Biological Control Ltd. and Granot Ventures. He served as a Director of Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd. Prof. Chet was the President of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot from 2001 to 2006. He is a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the European Academy of Sciences. He was Founding Director of the Otto Warburg Minerva Center for Agricultural Biotechnology from 1983 to 1986. He is a Professor of Microbiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, specializing in Biological Plant Control. Prof. Chet served as Director of Evogene Ltd. Prof. Chet’s scientific research focuses on the biological control of plant disease. In his field, he has published more than 350 articles in international scientific journals and edited three books. Prof. Chet has received many prestigious prizes and awards, including the Rothschild Prize in Agriculture in 1990; the Max-Planck Award for Distinguished Research in 1994; the Israel Prize in 1996; the Japanese Arima Prize for Applied Microbiology in 1996 and the Wolf Prize in 1998. He holds 32 patents. He is a prominent, leading Microbiology Scientist. He received an honorary Doctorate from Sweden’s Lund University in 1991. He has a BS, an MS and a PhD, all from Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Research Interest

Biological control of soil-borne plant pathogenic fungi, and genetic engineering of biocontrol agents. Lytic enzymes of fungal cell walls (chitinase and glucanases). Induced resistance of plants to fungi. Host-parasite relationship. Fungal-fungal interaction. Cell recognition and lectins. Chitin synthesis inhibition. Biochemical aspects of fungal morphogenesis. Microbial degradation of ligno-cellulose.