Modular CRISPR- a biotech innovation for a sustainable agriculture

Purpose and goal:

To reach many of the sustainability goals we face in agriculture, both for sustainable food production and the production of bio-based raw materials, plant breeding will have an important role. However, traditional plant breeding is long-term and for potatoes can take up to 15-30-years. With genome editing, the development time can be significantly shortened and we intend to implement a unique innovation for genome editing of potatoes to, e.g. produce potatoes with a reduced need of spraying.

Expected results and effects:

Potato is a crop that is complicated to breed with traditional methods as it is tetraploid, highly heterozygous and suffers from inbreeding depression. Potatoes would benefit of breeding methods where crossings can be avoided. CRISPR-Cas is a new method that can introduce single traits into already good genotypes. Here, a CRISPR method will be further developed to be able to expand the outcome from the breeding. The method can thus be used to introduce traits such as resistance to pests.

Approach and implementation:

We will validate a previous "proof of concept" (POC) to "proof of concept in crop" (POCC) for a flexible CRISPR system where endonuclease (gene scissors) are linked to other functional enzymes through an adapter system to introduce designed genetic changes. The validation will lead to implementation of the method in SolEdits process and thereby increase the number of possible genetic changes to e.g. introducing late blight resistance, one of our most combated diseases in crop cultivation.