Engineering bacteriophage for treating bacterial disease in potatoes

The **global population** is **expected** to reach **10 billion by 2050**. To feed this population, **it is estimated that global crop supply must increase by 35-56% by 2050**. Therefore, **there is an urgent need for** novel methods of **pest control to increase crop productivity** and ultimately support the increase of food demand. The need for alternatives to traditional pesticides is also fuelled by their negative effects, such as risks for human health, plants and the environment.

**Some of the most damaging plant diseases are caused by bacteria**. An **attractive alternative** to traditional pesticides to treat such plant diseases caused by bacteria **are bacteriophages**, a type of **beneficial virus** that **specifically infect a target bacteria**.

**Greenleaf is a UK-based company aiming to setup a novel technological platform** combining molecular biology, machine learning and synthetic biology to develop novel bacteriophage-based biopesticides **to treat plant diseases with high efficiency and no detrimental effect on human health or the environment**.

**The technology** will not be specifically tailored for the development of just a few bacteriophage-based biopesticides. Instead, it **will be easily applicable to any plant disease caused by bacteria**. We therefore expect our project to provide a key technical breakthrough for the development of bacteriophage-based products not only against phytopathogenic bacteria, but also for other applications such as treating human or animal diseases.