>3,500 mm/yr
92-96% endemic
Eastern Humid Forests
Alkaloid biosynthesis - MIAs, cardenolides, iboga alkaloids
Pharma: oncology & CNS discovery
Why Madagascar - Why Now
88 million years of isolated evolution. Almost entirely unexplored.
The world's densest concentration of novel plant chemistry - and the only platform that can make it legally and commercially accessible.
The Scientific Gap
One of Earth's densest concentrations of novel chemistry - almost entirely unexplored.
Madagascar separated from the African mainland roughly 88 million years ago, and from India approximately 80 million years ago. Its 9,470 endemic vascular plant species have evolved in complete biological isolation since before the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.
The result is a biochemical space unlike anything in the mainland African, Asian, or South American floras. Alkaloid and terpenoid scaffolds, biosynthetic gene clusters, and stress-tolerance mechanisms that exist nowhere else on Earth - and that pharmaceutical AI models, agritech crop-improvement pipelines, and synthetic biology programmes have never encountered.
Despite this, Only 3 species have full reference genomes publicly available. Less than 0.05% of Madagascar's endemic flora has been genomically characterised. The rest is a blank space in every public database on Earth.
Seven Distinct Chemical Universes
Seven Ecoregions. Seven Biochemical Worlds.
Madagascar's seven terrestrial ecoregions span a rainfall gradient wider than the distance from the Sahara to the Scottish Highlands - compressed into a single island. Each imposes a distinct biochemical selection pressure. Each produces chemistry found nowhere else. *Olson et al. (2001). BioScience 51(11):933-938. WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World.
<400 mm/yr
95-98% endemic
Spiny Thickets
CAM photosynthesis, bark photosynthesis, caudex water storage
Agritech: drought & heat resilience genes
600-1,200 mm/yr
88-93% endemic
Dry Deciduous Forests
Drought-deciduousness timing genes, bark phenolics, baobab chemistry
Agritech: seasonal drought tolerance; Pharma: bark actives
400-700 mm/yr
88-92% endemic
Succulent Woodlands
Xeric-specialist flavonoids and terpenoids; novel CAM variants
Pharma + Agritech: xeric chemistry pipeline
1,200-2,000 mm/yr
85-91% endemic
Montane Ericoid Thickets
UV-driven anthocyanin and terpenoid overproduction at >2,000 m altitude
Pharma: antioxidant & anti-UV compound classes
600-900 mm/yr
90-95% endemic
Limestone Karst & Tsingy
Phosphorus-starvation ? phenylpropanoid & flavonoid overproduction; metal tolerance
Pharma + Agritech: flavonoids, metal chelation genes
800-1,600 mm/yr
High - coastal specialists
Coastal Mangroves
Stilbenoids, neolignanes, aerenchyma architecture genes in stilt roots
Agritech: waterlogging tolerance; Pharma: anti-inflammatory
* Ecoregion classification: Olson, D.M., Dinerstein, E. et al. (2001). Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: A new map of life on Earth. BioScience 51(11): 933-938. WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (TEOW).
Species richness by ecoregion
Species richness by ecoregion
Species of Interest
Named species. Documented chemistry. Uncharacterised genes.
One species from each major ecoregion - each with a direct line to pharmaceutical or agritech value and a genome that has never been fully sequenced.
Explore all ten species →
Commercial Precedent
One Species: a class of chemotherapy drugs. 11,990+ species still unsequenced.
The Extinction Clock
The window to build this dataset is closing.
63% of Madagascar's endemic plant species are already classified as threatened with extinction by the IUCN. The primary driver is habitat loss - and it is accelerating.
Species not collected before 2030 may not be collectable at all. The window for building a complete, legally clean dataset of Madagascar's endemic flora is closing.
The Nagoya Protocol simultaneously creates urgency and exclusivity. The window for early-mover institutional agreements - the kind that create durable commercial advantage - is narrowing.
63%
of Madagascar's endemic plants are threatened with extinction
>90%
of IsoGentiX target species have zero public genomic data
2030
collection deadline for many threatened biomes at current rates
9,470
endemic species with no reference genome, transcriptome, or metabolome data
94.9%
of names cross-referenced against Kew Gardens, Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
668k
georeferenced plant records — every coordinate validated against the Madagascar map
First-Mover Advantage
Unlocking nature's intelligence.
Founding Partner positions are available across pharma, agritech, and AI. Domain exclusivity. First access. The competitive advantage that cannot be replicated.