Interactive
Exhibition to click on
Our exhibition on genome editing is currently set up on the BiT plaza at our main site in Einbeck. For all colleagues outside Einbeck and for all those who would like to read information from the exhibition again, you will find an interactive version here.
Current challenges faced in agriculture:
- Climate changes like drought and water scarcity
- A societal drive to reduce pesticides and the use of fertilizers
- Rising pressure through plant diseases and pests due to climatic changes
- A growing world population
- Degradation of arable land
- Targets to reduce CO₂ emissions
- Consumer demand for improved nutritional composition
- Societal demand to increase organic farming
Climatic changes and societal demands add to existing agricultural challenges, and breeders need a variety of methods to find solutions and sustain food supply. New technologies, including Genome Editing, are important for breeders to be able to react quickly to new challenges.
To tackle these challenges new plant varieties are needed that secure high yields, need less inputs, respond to regional conditions like climate, soil, pests and diseases, and meet different consumer demands.
To keep pace with agricultural challenges, we strongly rely on continuous technical innovation like Genome Editing.
Genome Editing could improve crops for new approaches to sustainable farming.
Genome Editing can contribute to sustainability in agriculture. The technology makes it possible to advance more quickly and opens new possibilities to precisely develop the desired characteristics.
Genome Editing can help to:
- Improve yield and yield stability
- Reduce inputs like water, chemical and fertilizers
- Increase energy and nutrient content
- Improve niche crops and rare traits
Climate change poses a major challenge to all of us, with increasing temperatures, more frequent droughts, flooding and other extreme weather phenomena impacting agriculture all around the world. Concurrently, our eating habits and modern lifestyle are affecting the environment and our own health. In many areas, access to affordable and nutritious food remains a major issue.
To tackle these challenges, we need plant breeding innovations that build on scientific data and evidence. Plant breeders play a key role in addressing the effects of climate change by fostering sustainable agriculture in the first step of the agri-food chain. Advanced molecular breeding methods, used in combination with traditional plant breeding, offer additional, more efficient possibilities to systematically develop desired plant characteristics.
In this overview, we highlight some examples* of the application of new breeding methods and their intended or proven benefits. These examples demonstrate that new breeding methods can be used to transfer traits that can ultimately aid society and the environment by, for example, increasing yields and reducing the need for inputs (producing “more with less”), supplying climate mitigation and adaptation solutions, and providing various benefits to human health.
* The examples listed here are not developed by KWS, but rather represent the broad range of work done in research institutes and companies around the globe.
Products on the market
Tomato
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Nutritional values
GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid) is normally present in high quantities in raw tomatoes, but reduces as the tomato matures. It provides several benefits to human health, such as lowering blood pressure. The “GABA tomato”, developed using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, maintains its naturally high GABA content through the ripening stage. Mature tomatoes have five to six times the GABA content of conventional tomatoes.
Soybean
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – TALEN
Benefits: Nutritional values
Oleic acid is a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid that has many health benefits for humans, such as reducing coronary heart disease. Soybean oil that has been developed through TALEN genome editing contains approximately 80 % oleic acid. It has 20 % less saturated fatty acids compared with conventional soybean oil and no trans fats, which are harmful to human health. Furthermore, it has a better shelf life compared with traditional soybean oil.
Research projects
Wheat
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Improved quality – food safety
Wheat is one of the top staple food crops, broadly consumed across the world. During the baking, toasting and high-temperature processing of wheat-based foods, acrylamide, a carcinogenic substance, is formed. An effective means of reducing acrylamide in food products is lowering the content of its precursor, free asparagine, in the wheat plant. Using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, researchers were able to affect the gene responsible for asparagine synthetase in wheat grain, thereby reducing the concentration of free asparagine in the grain.
Corn
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Improved field performance
Corn known as “waxy corn” has seed starch consisting solely of amylopectin. This causes it to have a special consistency that makes it suitable for many industrial uses. Waxy corn varieties can be developed significantly faster with genome editing than with conventional breeding methods. Moreover, CRISPR-produced waxy corn hybrids have been found to be higher-yielding than those hybrids produced with conventional trait introgression through backcrossing and marker-assisted selection.
Rice
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Improved resistance to insects and pathogens – tolerance to abiotic stressors
Genetic erosion refers to the loss of genetic diversity, and thus the loss of agronomic traits present in wild relatives or landraces (such as resistance to pests or diseases). Genetic erosion poses a particular threat to rice production in China, especially as climate change increases problems caused by crop pests and pathogens. Using CRISPR/Cas9, researchers were able to successfully edit a height gene to establish the semidwarf phenotype in landraces. The edited lines showed resistance to lodging, better tolerance of low-nutrient conditions and higher resistance to pathogens and insects compared with the modern varieties cultivated in China.
Broccoli
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Nutritional value
Broccoli is an important vegetable crop due to its good nutritional value. Glucoraphanin is a major glucosinolate substance present in broccoli. Glucoraphanin converts into sulforaphane, which benefits human health by preventing a variety of chronic diseases. Researchers used CRISPR/Cas to develop broccoli with increased glucoraphanin content.
Tomato
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Modified plant structure and flowering time to suit urban farming
Urban farming is gaining popularity due to its many benefits to the environment and society. Urban farming, however, requires crop varieties that are different in many ways from those used in conventional farming: Their size needs to be compact, and they need to yield at suitable times. Using genome-editing approaches to affect genes responsible for the tomato plant’s architecture and flowering time, researchers were able to create compact, early-flowering plants better suited to urban farming than conventional varieties.
Tomato
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Climate adaptation – Tolerance to salt stress
Soil salinity is a serious threat to agriculture, especially in many dry and irrigated areas. Generally, high soil salinity prevents plants’ ability to uptake water and nutrients. Researchers have targeted negative stress-response regulators to develop tomato plants that are tolerant to high salinity levels at the germination and vegetative stages under experimental conditions.
Soybean
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas9
Benefits: Increased yield
The number of seeds per pod is one of the main determinants of soybean yield. Using CRISPR/Cas9, researchers were able to introduce an allele to a low-altitude soybean variety and increase its yield by approximately 8 % to 10 %. The allele is present in many high-yielding soybean varieties and can now be used to breed superior varieties for tropical and subtropical regions, as intercross breeding between varieties from different latitudes is difficult.
Pennycress/
CoverCress™
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Climate mitigation – diversified crop cycle
Pennycress is used as a ‘climate-smart’ cover crop to protect soil and control carbon loss outside of cropping seasons. With genome editing, pennycress was developed into an “off-season” crop with multiple uses that allow for sustainable optimization of agricultural systems. Containing approximately 30 % oil and a protein composition like canola, CoverCressTM has the ideal composition to be used as e.g. a low-input feed for various animals, and as a low-carbon-intensity feedstock for the production of renewable fuels. Various further potential uses are envisioned.
Oilseed rape
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Increased yield
In oilseed rape, plant height and branching directly correlate with yield. It has been challenging to develop plants with a betteryielding plant architecture using traditional breeding methods. With CRISPR/Cas, researchers were able to directly edit genes that regulate plant height and axillary bud outgrowth. This resulted in semidwarf plants with increased branching that provide desirable germplasm for further breeding of high-yielding oilseed rape.
Potato
Method applied
Targeted mutagenesis (SDN-1) – CRISPR/Cas
Benefits: Improved resistance to pathogens – abiotic stress tolerance
Potato virus Y (PVY) is one of the most economically destructive potato diseases. When researchers edited an allele encoding a domain of coilin, a structural protein involved in RNA metabolism and other cellular functions in potatoes, the edited potatoes showed increased resistance to PVY and improved tolerance to salinity and osmotic stress.
Sugarbeet
At KWS, genome editing is used mainly for research purposes: we use genome editing for example in gene identification and validation. The genome editing service for sugarbeet was established in close connection to the KWS sugarbeet breeders and sugarbeet business unit in 2021.
Sunflower
The genome editing service at KWS is continuously expanding and transitioning from technology development to application. Sunflower is the latest crop added to the portfolio.
Wheat
In 2020, KWS joined the project PILTON (Fungal tolerance of wheat by new breeding methods/ Pilztoleranz von Weizen mittels neuer Züchtungsmethoden) along with 54 collaborators, to develop fungal tolerance in wheat and reduce the use of plant protection products. In the framework of this project, KWS was able to successfully develop genome edited T1 seed in only nine months time.
Oilseed rape
Oilseed rape is an example of a crop for which improved resistance is an important breeding objective. Genome editing makes it easier to breed varieties with increased resistance against insect pests that spread disease. Multiplex genome editing (MGE) technologies, where two or more specific DNA loci are modified in a genome with high precision, can be used to validate candidate genes of insect resistance in oilseed rape.
Corn
Sustainable agriculture is the main focus in the development and application of genome editing on our KWS crops. The routine genome editing service (SDN-1) for corn was established already in 2018.
KWS Genome Editing
PILTON - Fungal tolerance of wheat by new breeding methods
PILTON - Forschungsprojekt zu pilztolerantem Weizen durch neue Züchtungsmethoden