Article
There is no doubt that modern agriculture faces an unprecedented challenge, adapting to harsh climatic shifts while sustaining a burgeoning global population. An alarming consequence of these fluctuating climate patterns has been the increased emergence of rapidly spreading diseases in agriculture that severely threaten global food security for our generation and those to come.
There are countless examples of such diseases – one that hits close to home here at Tropic is Panama Disease which is caused by a deadly fungus that is destroying banana plantations at an alarming rate and threatening the livelihoods of 400 million people worldwide.
We are also witnessing a steep rise in viral disease outbreaks, destroying not just crops but also livestock, poultry and marine species. For instance, cacao trees that provide the vital ingredient in chocolate are affected by Cacao Swollen Shoot disease (CSSD), caused by a virus that is tearing through entire plantations in West Africa where 70% of the world’s cocoa is sourced. This has not only put the livelihoods of cocoa growers at risk but is gradually beginning to impact the future supply of chocolate.
Diseased swollen stem on a cacao plant caused by CSSD
leading to devastating losses on cacao plantations like this one in West Africa.
Yet another relevant example is avian influenza (commonly referred to as bird flu) caused by the avian influenza virus (AIV) that has resurfaced in recent years – stronger and more tolerant to existing control measures. If left unchecked, AIV could not only wipe out large scale poultry populations (with billions in economic losses worldwide) but potentially spread to livestock too.
When we embarked on our mission to transform tropical agriculture, Panama Disease (TR4) lay atop our priorities. Our main challenges with addressing it though were two-fold: 1) banana being a sterile crop could not be easily bred or improved by conventional means, 2) developing an improved banana product that would be considered as non-GMO to allow for quicker paths and access to global markets.
Gene-edited banana plantlets (inlay) are routinely shipped from our facilities at Tropic
for large scale field trials in Central & South America to confirm resistance to Panama Disease (or TR4).
GEiGS® [pronounced jigs] or Gene Editing induced Gene Silencing was born out of this effort as an elegant way of producing banana plants which are resistant to Panama Disease. At Tropic, we have since also been applying the technology to develop rice varieties which are able to fight off infection by the Blast fungus.
GEiGS® has also attracted the attention of world leading companies like Corteva, British Sugar, Genus and others who are currently using the platform to address hugely important diseases in other crops, livestock and aquaculture species.
GEiGS® trait design is made scalable and accessible through Tropic’s own GEiGS-BioCompute computational platform
that enables the journey from trait definition to trait implementation in a matter of weeks.
