Sponsored feature, written by Farming Future Food.
An AI platform that can make plants more resistant to drought, disease and pests using small changes in plant DNA could unlock precision crop breeding and help farmers mitigate food security threats.
Researchers at UK-based Phytoform Labs have developed CRE.AI.TIVE™, an AI tool that can rapidly evolve sequences of plant DNA to activate desirable traits, speeding up crop breeding that can otherwise take many years.
Bringing new crops to fields, faster
While precision breeding tools like CRISPR-Cas can enable scientists to make changes to plant DNA, in the world of plant breeding it is essential to know what precise changes will make a significant impact that will lead to the commercialisation of new crops.
Until now, scientists didn’t have a way of knowing exactly which DNA had a specific impact on a plant’s traits, which is where Phytoform’s AI tool comes in.
“CRISPR is currently facing a bottleneck preventing it from delivering on its promise to help bring about better, more sustainable crops,” said Dr Nicolas Kral, chief technology officer for Phytoform Labs.
“Plants already have the genetic solution to stressors such as drought, but it’s a case of switching on exactly the right part of the code. Until now, you didn’t have a way to turn genes on scalably. Existing methods took years and weren’t always successful.”
Model trained on globally important crops
The company’s AI model was trained using the DNA sequences of 12 different crops, including corn, soybean and tomato, with no prior knowledge of areas which regulated plant traits or their locations.
By learning ‘plant speak’, it can predict gene activity from DNA, allowing the company to use the AI to comb through millions of sequences on a computer, identifying where slight changes can be made.
This can be used to create DNA code to activate and tune genes, improving crop traits with no adverse effects on the plant.
Getting the best from cutting edge agri-tech
The technology has the potential to allow CRISPR-driven precision breeding to replace previous techniques such as genetic modification, which can achieve desirable traits but are prone to unintended negative effects.
CRE.AI.TIVE is also able to learn from cultivar-specific data, meaning it can be applied to specific regions and farming requirements.
“CRISPR is great, but it’s only as good as the changes that you are trying to make,” said Dr Kral.
“If you identify a gene and its function, for example a gene for drought tolerance, that doesn’t mean you have a commercial trait. You only have a trait if that gene is active in the right tissue at the right time.
“That’s what this technology is offering, bringing a new level of control to plant breeding.”
Another current limitation to precision breeding is a lack of genomic data on plant species, which is another area the AI platform can play a role, he added.
CRE.AI.TIVE captures the diversity of plant genomics and uses species with more available data to make accurate predictions about those with less.
After proving the concept in plant cells, the next step is to show drought tolerance in full plants.
Phytoform Labs is now working with seed companies, with the aim of bringing the first AI-assisted, precision-bred crops to market within the next two years.
