A Yield Revolution in Row Crops Cometh

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Yield10’s Brave New World of Metabolic Engineering, Benson Hill’s cloud biology and CRISPR/Cas9 from Purdue and the Chinese Academy of Sciences? Crop yield may never be the same. And developers using crops for bioindustrials or nutrition stand to reap the benefit via bigger refineries and lower input costs.

Yield, yield, yield. Just about everyone thinks about it, talks about it, dreams about it, depends on the advancement of same. But row crops are tough. There are only so many acres, so many photons, so much CO2, and where that fixed CO2 ends up is inherently more complex than in e.coli or yeast.

A CRISPR gambit is paying off in rice
In the headline grabber this past week , a team of scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to develop a variety of rice that produces 25-31 percent more grain and would have been virtually impossible to create through traditional breeding methods.

Their findings were just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — and you can read all about it here.

Benson Hill, Beck’s and cloud biology in a concerted attack on corn yields

Also on the radar this month? Benson Hill Biosystems, a crop improvement company unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants, and Beck’s, the largest independent, retail seed company in the United States will advance a trait product candidate through the final stages of development and anticipate filing a regulatory dossier with the USDA by 2021.

And Yield10’s metabolic engineering approach
When Metabolix announced back in 2015 that they were spinning out a company called Yield10 to commercialize crop science innovations, targeted on key row crops and focused on increased carbon fixation — that made a lot of sense.

A Primer for Non-Scientists: Two Major Types of Photosynthesis, C3 and C4
Generally, plants can be categorized into two different groups based on their system of photosynthesis. C3 photosynthesis, known as the simplest type of photosynthesis system, exists in most agricultural crops, such as potato, rice, soybean and wheat. C4 photosynthesis is a more complex system because plants using this system have evolved a distinctive cellular structure, concentrating carbon dioxide for the RUBISCO enzyme through the C4 pathway. Corn, oil palm, and sugarcane are part of the C4 photosynthesis plant family.

In general, C4 photosynthesis plants have up to 5 times inherently higher plant yield than C3 photosynthesis plants, and such difference in plant yield comes from evolution, which has led plant scientists to seriously consider the possibility that new genetic enhancements can be created to improve the photosynthetic system in C3 plants. With advanced computational methods as well as the agricultural biotechnology that our PHB-focused crop science program has developed over the years, we are able to observe encouraging early indications of improved photosynthesis performance in plants, which has the potential to lead to novel yield traits to increase plant yield, seed yield, biomass, oil and starch content.

“It is hard to get excited about a new wave of promised GMO grain crops with increased yields (+25% rice, +10% corn) when we know nothing of the methods used and nothing of the potential side-effects. In fact, all we have are empty promises. Plants have trade-offs. To increase yield, invariably, you must sacrifice something else. To genetically modify a plant sometimes questionable practices might be used…GMO products are not inherently bad and they have their place, but we must understand that place.”

That does a pretty good job of summarizing the reasons to be cautious about the benefits of this technology wave, and we’ll continue to watch this space as the story emerges. READ MORE