Unlocking market opportunities for private sector investors in CRISPR agriculture

Private sector companies are at the forefront of driving innovation and commercialization in CRISPR agriculture. We see various companies, both large and small-scale, leveraging CRISPR-Cas technology to transform crop improvement and enhance food production. These companies are shaping the future of the agricultural industry and driving the market for CRISPR-edited plants.

Private sector researchers are conducting breakthrough developments that could accelerate the planting of CRISPR-edited seeds in fields. Achieving sustainability in agriculture is one of the top priorities in the private sector. In September 2021, Sanatech Seed sold genome-edited tomatoes made with CRISPR-Cas9 technology in the open market for the first time. There is also a substantial increase in the number of research publications mentioning the use of CRISPR for crop improvement since 2016.

The agrotech company Pairwise wants to harness the CRISPR technique to make healthy foods more appealing to consumers and claims that consumers will be able to buy fruits and vegetables that are easier to snack on within 4-5 years. Consumers consider baby carrots and seedless watermelons developed through CRISPR as healthy alternatives to instant snacks and packaged foods.

Other leaders in the industry include Pioneer, which is generating better-performing hybrid crop seeds that address farmers’ needs using the latest breeding and gene editing tools to provide higher-yielding and more resilient crops. Bayer Crop Science, a sub-division of pharmaceutical giant Bayer, is aiming for a 30% reduction in field greenhouse gases, a 30% reduction in agriculture’s impact on the environment, and empowering 100 million smallholder farmers to access sustainable agricultural solutions by 2030.

Alongside agriculture technology giants, some small-scale entities and startups are venturing into this domain. Inari, a Cambridge-based startup, Massachusetts has ambitious goals for gene editing in corn with increasing yield by 20% and reducing water and nitrogen usage by 40%. Inari is employing its proprietary genetic design software powered by machine learning for researching genetic interactions and pathways instead of single genes to edit multiple genes at once using CRISPR, ultimately generating a variety of seeds that are ideal for different growing conditions.

Another CRISPR agricultural technology startup in Europe includes PlantEdit, founded in 2017 and based in Ireland. PlantEdit optimized a protocol to introduce CRISPR gene edits into apple and grapevine without using additional DNA, making the process faster, more efficient, and adaptable to other crops. Yet another startup founded in 2015 and based in the Netherlands, Hudson River Biotechnology, uses a proprietary workflow called TiGER (Target identification, Guide selection, Entry into the cell, and Regeneration) for gene editing of a variety of crops to achieve desirable traits. Technology giants, startups developing novel solutions, and academic researchers collaborating are driving effective and affordable innovations in the agriculture industry, ensuring global food security in the near future.

Market potential of CRISPR agriculture

The Global Plant Breeding & CRISPR Plants Market is projected to reach nearly $24 billion by 2027. The factors such as an increase in the number of crop damages due to harsh climatic conditions, growing awareness about the benefits of plant breeding & CRISPR plants in the agricultural sector, and the high adoption rate of the plant-breaded crop in the Latin America region are driving the market growth.

Below are a few pioneering startups in the CRISPR agriculture domain have been detailed below:

Researchers have modified 122 rice genes using the CRISPR/Cas system for crop improvement, making rice the top CRISPR-modified crop, followed by tomato with 30 genes and oilseed rape with 17 genes.

Limitations and prospects

CRISPR-Cas technology has been proven to have the unique capability to modify genes and create diverse crop varieties with desired agronomic traits. However, most of the gene-editing work for crop improvement is still at the stage of elucidating the genomic function and regulatory mechanisms. The commercialization of CRISPR crops still has a long way to go with gene-editing tools yet to fulfill all the requirements for plant genome editing.

Technical limitations for CRISPR agriculture

Some quality-related traits, controlled by multiple Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) and individual genes, show minimal phenotypic changes, which limits the effective use of CRISPR-Cas in plants. One possible solution is to develop the CRISPR/Cas-mediated chromosome rearrangement method.

CRISPR in plants faces another technological challenge: the low efficiency of innate Homology-Directed Repair (HDR), which hinders gene replacement and large chromosomal deletions. Low HDR efficiency in plants is currently making gene insertions in plants challenging.

Related reading: CRISPR crops: The next frontier in sustainable agriculture and global food security

Regulatory mechanism

There are strict regulatory norms concerning any technology or product related to the human body viz, drug, food, genetics, surgical instruments, etc. While there are strong and well-defined regulatory standards for genetic engineering products like GMO crops, regulations for CRISPR-based crops are still undefined. This situation further delays the commercialization of CRISPR-based foods. For example, the EU regulates CRISPR crops as GM crops even when the products are free from foreign DNA and are without transgene-free thus increasing the time and cost of crop variety development.

Public acceptance

With promising research and attempts in CRISPR technology in agriculture to alleviate food insecurity and bring about a revolutionary change in food supply and quality, there are, however, public concerns that may hinder innovations in plant breeding. There are huge concerns among plant breeders regarding CRISPR gene-edited food, policies and legal frameworks concerning technology, intellectual property rights, and high development costs in low-income countries.

Therefore, fully realizing the potential of CRISPR requires informing consumers about its benefits for both producers and the environment. Awareness must include a better understanding of how these tools could work, where they could work, and what impediments will keep them from working.

In the current scenario, it is important to display how plant scientists across regions and sectors see this promising technology evolving in real life which will ensure its larger adaptation. Although challenges remain, experts anticipate that gene-editing technologies like CRISPR will gain wider adoption in the future, playing a crucial role in improving crop quality at an affordable price.

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