
Vegetable breeding company Bejo and tropical seed industry leader Tropic Biosciences have launched a collaboration deploying Tropic’s ground-breaking Gene Editing induced Gene Silencing (GEiGS®) technology platform to develop durable disease resistance against multiple diseases in Bejo’s elite carrot germplasm.
Successful outcomes from this multi-trait partnership will create precision-edited carrot varieties that exhibit robust GEiGS®-mediated resistance to pathogens that threaten the long-term viability of carrot production worldwide.
Carrots are one of the most widely grown and consumed vegetables globally, with annual production exceeding 45 million metric tonnes at an estimated market value of over £25 billion by 2030. Global production, however, is under mounting pressure from a range of destructive soilborne and foliar diseases. In some years, growers have experienced yield reduction by as much as 50%. These diseases not only affect yield and crop quality, but significantly shorten storage life and marketability leading to large post-harvest losses. With an increasing demand for more sustainably grown produce and resilient supply chains, there is an urgent need to develop varieties with built-in resistance.
″At Bejo, we are continuously looking to help our growers improve quality and yield in the most sustainable way. Teaming up with Tropic and combining our capabilities in biotechnology, breeding and phytopathology gives us a great opportunity to achieve that goal. We expect that Tropic’s GEiGS platform offers the potential to deliver innovations in disease resistance by delivering on the long-standing promise that RNA silencing has brought us,″said Marc Bots, Director of Research & Breeding at Bejo.
This world class partnership aims to strengthen Bejo’s repertoire of New Breeding Technologies by combining decades of its carrot breeding expertise with Tropic’s game-changing GEiGS® platform. The collaboration aims to deliver next-generation non-GMO products that are naturally disease resilient and better suited to environmental stressors – also aligning with the sustainable production standards synonymous with Bejo’s products.
″This partnership with Bejo exemplifies the power of combining established crop-breeding experience with cutting-edge biotechnology. By applying our GEiGS® platform to Bejo’s elite germplasm, we aim to deliver durable, non-GMO disease resistance to secure the future of carrot production worldwide. It’s an important step toward more sustainable, resilient food systems that meet the demands of growers, retailers, and consumers alike,″said Jack Peart, Chief Development Officer at Tropic
Source : Agropages