An Israeli startup, ClimateCrop, says it can raise the amount of energy a plant stores each day by switching off a molecular brake on starch production, and that the change could lift growth, stress tolerance and possibly yield across many crops. Its chief executive, Yehuda Borenstein, described the approach to AgFunderNews reporter Elaine Watson at the World Agri-Tech innovation summit in London.
During photosynthesis a plant turns sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into sugars, and keeps part of the carbon in its leaves as starch, to be broken down again for growth at night or during drought and other stress. Researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science found a group of proteins that controls this daily store. One of them slows starch production as the light fades and also keeps it partly in check during the day.
ClimateCrop, founded in 2021 by Borenstein, Erez Eliyahu and Vivekanand Tiwari, has licensed the discovery from the Weizmann Institute and holds a patent on changes to the gene concerned. By neutralising the command that tells the plant to stop making starch, the company says plants accumulate 10 to 15 percent more starch every day. "So every day I have more energy and I'm using it so I'm growing a little bit faster," Borenstein said, adding that roots reach soil nutrients sooner and plants handle and recover from stress a little better.
The company has tested the change in potato, tomato, canola and sorghum and seen a similar effect in each, Borenstein said, with good results in bananas as well. He expects the effect to vary between crops, and to be smaller in C4 plants, which already concentrate carbon more efficiently, than in the more common C3 plants. He said the company had seen no trade-offs so far.
The edit can be made with gene editing or other gene modification, and in some crops the same mutation has been found occurring naturally in large seed libraries held by a partner company, which would allow conventional breeding. ClimateCrop prefers partners to make the edits in each crop and is licensing the technology to breeders, seed companies and growers, who will carry it into their own varieties and field trials.
Borenstein acknowledged that the company cannot promise a fixed yield gain, since yield depends on the season, the region and the conditions, and said the trait needs testing over many seasons. "On yield you never win on the knockout. You win on points," he said. He argued that worsening climate stress makes growers want this kind of insurance.
For farmers, the claim to watch is resilience rather than a headline yield figure: a crop that stores more energy by day may recover faster after a dry spell or heat. The company's results so far are its own, from early tests, and field trials with partners are still ahead.
Photo: Amos Meron / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: AgFunderNews
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