Cibus Confirms Important Milestone for Nutrient Use Efficiency Trait Development
Cibus, Inc., a leading agricultural technology company that develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties, today announced it has confirmed it has successfully made edits in Canola for its initial Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE) trait. These newly edited plants will now be tested in controlled environments. If successful, Cibus expects this will mark a milestone of what is believed to be the first NUE gene edits in a major crop in North America.
Cibus is a leader in developing complex gene-edited traits in plants. The Company focuses on key strategic areas like disease and other productivity traits like NUE. The aim of its NUE trait development efforts is to significantly improve crop production with lower inputs through more efficient use of soil-borne nutrients without compromising the yield growers expect. Today, only about a third of applied nitrogen fertilizer is absorbed by the plant, limiting the plant’s biomass generation and grain yield. Beyond yield and cost reduction, NUE trait also has the potential to improve resource sustainability and positively impact air, water, and soil quality. Globally, 3% of CO2 emissions arise from the production of nitrogen fertilizer, with a 20% reduction equivalent to taking 130 million cars off the road. Cibus believes using gene editing technologies in its Rapid Trait Development System™ (RTDS®), the cornerstone of Cibus’ Trait Machine™ process, can improve NUE, reducing environmental impact and combatting climate change.
Steve Sanders, PhD and Executive Director of Molecular Discovery and Computational Biology at Cibus, commented, “We are excited with the speed with which we have completed the first edited NUE plants. This was a product of collaboration with a third party to develop this mode of action for NUE. We believe this further validates how Cibus’ technologies can accelerate the time to edit additional complex traits. We believe we continue to demonstrate that our approach to trait development is additive to established industry standards, accelerating timelines compared to conventional breeding programs.”
Peter Beetham, PhD, Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cibus, added, “This latest development with NUE is particularly notable in that we took a trait developed and validated by a highly reputable industry-leading third party and successfully integrated it into a Canola plant utilizing our proprietary RTDS technology platform – the Trait Machine™ process. This coordination and efficiency speaks to Cibus’ unique capabilities to accelerate development timelines for growers, the agriculture industry, and the environment.” Rory Riggs, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Cibus, concluded, “Through the Calyxt merger, we solidified our position as a leading gene editing and trait development company for major crops, with a model geared toward licensing traits to our seed company partners for the benefit of their farmer customers. We are armed with three Developed traits – two Rice Herbicide Tolerance (HT) traits and our Canola Pod Shatter Reduction (PSR) trait – and backed by extensive field trials to support commercialization with customers. Further, trait patents such as one issued for our Pod Shatter Reduction Trait, are accompanied with field trial results supporting the patented claims