Crop improvement during last century has contributed to successfully feed the world population. This success relies not only in a higher yield, but also in a better food quality and a more efficient use of resources.
Gene modification has been widely used along the 20th century to increase the productivity of plants used for agriculture purposes. The fine edition of plant genomes by new technologies such as CRISPR (Clustered Regulatory Interspaced Palindromic Repeats) can contribute to achieve in a more efficient manner the aims of modern agriculture. This technology can be applied to many plant species, including cereals as has been commented before.
Before CRISPR technology, these projects consisted on the random mutagenesis of plant genomes and the detection of a desired characteristic (i.e. a plant with a better performance) among a population of more than 23 k lines, each containing at least 10 plants. In other words, about 230.000 plants had to be sown, grow and analyzed.
The implementation of CRISPR for gene editing has an enormous potential since it is possible to specifically modify a character of an organism. IDEN’s focus was directed to modify a characteristic of maize that would increase its agronomic value (i.e. more nutrient, lower water use) and therefore will increase the market value of the crop. Although the final product in the market would arrive in several years, the first step consists on the optimization of the system, and the edition of the genes in order to validate the interest of their use to obtain better varieties.
With CRISPR technology the investment needed to obtain a mutant plant has been dramatically reduced and makes it feasible for an SME such as IDEN, opening the door for new product development and commercialization.
For these reasons, the objective of CRISPR-4-CROPS project is the generation of a new variant of maize with an increased market value. On one hand, to generate a maize variant that over accumulates nutritional compounds (biofortification). As a parallel project, to generate a maize variant that is more tolerant to abiotic stress as a feasible alternative to sustain the productivity under adverse climate conditions.
Technical feasibility, high specificity, low cost and short generation time compared to other methods derive on an important economic impact.
It is important to consider that the timeline of the project consists mainly in the implementation of CRISPR technology in maize, but after completion there is still a long process to get a commercial product into the market. Even though this is a very initial step in the crop improvement process, the implementation of this technology makes IDEN able to use it for the modification of other characteristics (other target genes), other plant species, even other organisms, in the future. The ability to use CRISPR technology positions IDEN as an innovative SME on the worldwide gene editing scenario and opens new product development opportunities.
