It’s one thing knowing that two different plants each have genes conferring specific traits of interest, says Ohalo CEO Dave Friedberg. The problem is that when you crossbreed them, a random 50% of the genes from each parent transfer to their offspring, which means the whole endeavor remains a crapshoot, as Elaine Watson reports for AgFunderNews (AFN).
“[With traditional cross-breeding methods] it may never happen that you get all the good genes together in one plant to make it both disease resistant and drought resistant, for example. You just have to get lucky to be successful.”
The ‘boosted breeding’ technology, which deploys proteins to effectively switch off the mechanism that splits the genes in each parent, is a potential gamechanger in the crop breeding world, claims Friedberg, as the resulting plants contain all the beneficial traits from both parents, rather than a random half of the traits from each parent.
Strikingly, these ‘polyploid’ plants [possessing more than two complete sets of chromosomes] have also been shown to have significantly higher yields, says the startup, which was formed in 2019 by Friedberg’s investment company and venture foundry The Production Board. Ohalo has since raised “a little over $100 million” from undisclosed investors.
‘Rather than end up with a crapshoot where we’re 50% likely to get the traits we want, we’re 100% going to get them all’, according to Friedberg.
“There is definitely a holy shit moment when you speak with breeders about this. I will also tell you that we’ve met with a lot of breeders who don’t believe it, but that will change. It’s not something that we know other people have been trying to do, so we’re pretty excited,” Friedberg says.
Source: AgFunderNews (AFN). Read the full story here
Image: Dave Friedberg, CEO, Ohalo Genetics Image credit Ohalo Genetics
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