Plant Organelle Technologies
Farmers suffer from yield loss due to the vulnerability of current crop varieties under climate change.
- Cohort
- NG Autumn 25
- Sector
- Agriculture & Food
What they do
Current crop breeding technologies only focus on using the nuclear genome, which is large (3-7 Gb), complex and low-copy-number (2-4 copies). This leads to three major problems in crop trait development.
Product & technology
POT’s answer to the problem is to focus on the organelle genome, which is a simple (150kb-450kb) and high-copy-number genome (up to 10,000 copies). Organelle genome has advantages in trait development, such as: POT's proprietary technology enables access to the organelle genome, ensuring fixation of designated genetic modification across 10,000 copies of the genome. This is critical to achieve a stable organelle trait in crops. POT aims to develop the technology into a crop breeding platform to deliver products (traits) in three categories.
Why we invested
- →Huge, urgent problem: climate-driven crop loss from weather and insects is a multi hundred billion dollar drag on global food supply.
- →New genetic “surface area”: organelle genome editing offers simpler, high copy DNA with ~100x higher expression, overcoming key limits of nuclear based trait engineering.
- →Credible execution and model: top tier scientific founders plus experienced agbio operator
