Revolutionising Agriculture: Pioneering a New Era of Synthetic Biology in the Agrifood Industry
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By Fran Antequera, Deeptech Expert
What is going on?
As you probably know, agriculture has to face various challenges that include: climate change, limited resources for a continually growing population, pests and diseases, and the need for sustainable practices. However, regenerative agriculture and new approaches as synthetic biology (synbio) hold the potential to address these issues and revolutionize agriculture.
What does it mean?
Synbio is the construction or redesign of biological components, functions, or organisms that do not exist naturally, using gene sequences to create desired traits or functions. Synthetic biology is usually called “bioengineering”; that's why the motto of the biggest synbio company, Ginkgo Bioworks, is: “Making biology easier to engineer”. As many experts in the field like Andrew Hessel defend, biology is the most advanced manufacturing technology and it's now when we are learning how to use it.
Synbio can solve several agricultural problems for example by enhancing crop productivity and/or resilience, reducing crop losses, increasing food production and enhancing food security. By engineering plants, scientists can develop crops with improved traits such as increased yield, disease resistance, and tolerance to harsh environmental conditions like drought or soil salinity; both closely related; drought causes irrigation with water of poorer quality that increases soil salinity, deteriorating it. One of the main experts in agriculture in Europe, Simon Maechling, highlights how to modify vegetables to face problems related to sustainability or to improve their organoleptic traits, like increasing the GABA levels (a hormone very relevant in vegetables) in the modified tomato or reducing the browning in apples or bananas to reduce food waste.
Why does it matter?
💸For markets:
In Simon's words Synbio in agriculture will be the next thing to deliver sustainable affordable foods and to help combat potential effects of climate tech on growing. The opportunities in the synthetic biology agriculture market range from crop breeding and metabolic engineering [2] to the application of microorganisms to improve agricultural practices, like enhancing nutrient cycling, pest resistance or producing biofertilizers, biostimulants and biopesticides [2]. Regarding commercially available products, synbio leads to chemicals produced by engineered cells like diamines or sitagliptin or genome-edited soy, highlighting the application of synbio tools and demonstrating the potential for real-world implementation [3]. Summarizing, synthetic biology has the potential to enhance productivity, sustainability, and the overall efficiency of agricultural practices, addressing global challenges in food security and environmental sustainability [1-4].
🧑🏿🤝🧑🏻For society:
Synbio and regenerative agriculture is the only alternative to grow food sustainably to meet growing supply needs. For that reason, we should focus on educating society on the benefits and safeties of synbio in agriculture in order to bring the public acceptance of this technology. Here concretely for Simon it is important to differentiate between the terrifying “Genetically Modified Organism”, GMO (transgenes) and gene editing with specific changes (and not mutagenesis provoking random mutations). The main difference is that gene editing is very safe because you are turning on/off the genes; unlike GMOs, which introduce a foreign piece of DNA in the organism, making it less safe due to the possible errors that could occur once the transgene is integrated in the genome of the organism.
🔮What’s next?
Agriculture experts hope for general acceptance of gene editing especially in Europe 12-18 months, defending that the only way to reduce pesticides and fertilizers to be aligned with the European Green Deal is to embrace technologies that use gene editing like CRISPR/Cas (whose discoverers won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020). Simon Maechling thinks that “If they don't allow this, it is not going to be about science, it's going to be about politics”.
References
FRS, J. B. C., & House, K. FOOD, ENERGY, WATER AND THE CLIMATE: A PERFECT STORM OF GLOBAL EVENTS?. Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government.
Wang, L., Zang, X., & Zhou, J. (2022). Synthetic biology: A powerful booster for future agriculture. Advanced Agrochem, 1(1), 7-11.
Voigt, C. A. (2020). Synthetic biology 2020–2030: six commercially-available products that are changing our world. Nature Communications, 11(1), 6379.
Goold, H. D., Wright, P., & Hailstones, D. (2018). Emerging opportunities for synthetic biology in agriculture. Genes, 9(7), 341.
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