Genetic Editing of Inoculants via CRISPR/Cas9

Editing to Improve Agricultural Sustainability

Context of the story

• Inoculant Market = USD 9 billion/year
• Consolidated and growing market (CAGR=10.5%)
• 80% are rhizobia for soybeans (Malba 2023)
• Urea (USD 150/ha) vs Rizobios (USD 15/ha)
• No developments in the last three decades
• Improvement gap between crops vs. inoculants

Improving the genetics of traditional inoculants

The implemented initiative

With support from FONTAGRO and their own resources, INTA, UNSAM, CONICET, IIBCE, UNC, UNFRO, CSIC, and EMBRAPA have started promoting technological innovations in the field of inoculants

Bacterial genetic improvement

The technological solution

• Improvement of current inoculants in use (more scaling)
• Continuous improvement: stacked mutations (generation 1.0, 2.0, etc.)
• Selection of spontaneous and CRISPR/Cas9-edited mutants (non-GMO)
• Acceptance of gene editing as non-GMO (countries = 70% of global population)