Singlestage non-TransgEnic crispr for crop Productivity (STEP)

Crop productivity must increase 70% by 2050 to meet rising global population (WHO, 2016). Genome Editing (GE) increases productivity by creating new plant traits. Payments to use the technology for a single species range from £8m-80m (AgFunder, 2016). I is a complex 2-stage generation process, with the 2nd stage (non-transgenic GE) especially lengthy. All crops are at risk of disease, eg Black Sigatoka Disease (BSD) causes 50% yield losses in banana, obliging farmers to use fungicide 20-70 times/yr (Fairtrade, 2016). Thus, to make non-transgenic GE available to more species, such as asexual crops and crops with long breeding cycles the process needs to be faster and cheaper (Economist, 2016). Tropic Biosciences (TBio) has created a Non-Transgenic GE (NTC) Tool, a single-stage only generation GE process, meaning it can be applied to long breeding cycle and asexual crops. Their objective is to prove the concept in lab conditions, demonstrate it with a BSD-resistant banana trait, reduce the GE process time and cost by 70% and make their NTC Tool affordably licensable to small innovators.