Indian crop solutions company Crystal Crop Protection and US gene-editing firm Cibus have agreed to develop gene-edited traits in mustard (Brassica juncea) for India, with Crystal Crop holding an exclusive licence to evaluate and sell the traits there.
Mustard is India's main cooking oilseed and the country grows more of it than any other, on roughly 8.5 million hectares. Yet India imports more than half the edible oil it uses, about 17 million tonnes a year, mostly palm and soybean oil. Indian mustard yields average 1,200 to 1,400 kilograms per hectare, against 1,800 to 2,000 in leading producing countries.
Cibus says its platform makes precise changes to a plant's own genes without adding foreign DNA and delivers improved varieties far faster than conventional breeding. Crystal Crop brings its mustard programme, knowledge of India's seed market and a network of more than 14,823 distribution partners across 23 states and four union territories, as of 31 March 2026.
"Mustard matters to India the way few crops matter to any country," said Peter Beetham, Cibus co-founder, president and chief operating officer. Ankur Aggarwal, Crystal Crop's chairman and managing director, said the aim is "a mustard that returns more from every acre".
The work fits India's National Mission on Edible Oils - Oilseeds, launched in 2024, which aims to lift the oilseed harvest from about 39 million tonnes in 2022-23 to about 70 million tonnes by 2030-31 and names genome editing among its tools. In 2022 India's environment ministry ruled that crops edited in their own genes, with no foreign DNA, fall outside its GMO rules.
The story is based on the companies' announcement carried by AgroPages.
Photo: Nitin Das / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: AgroPages
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