>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 12,000+ 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, fewer than 10 species have full reference genomes publicly available. Less than 0.08% 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
12,000+
endemic species with no reference genome, transcriptome, or metabolome data
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.