Nurturing Resilient Crops for Sustainable Food Security in a Changing Climate
Nurturing Resilient Crops for Sustainable Food Security in a Changing Climate
Nurturing Resilient Crops for Sustainable Food Security in a Changing Climate
Crop4Clima developed crops that can better tolerate arid conditions and assimilate more carbon dioxide to help mitigate climate change while improving yield and maintaining crop quality.
Funding
We received funding through the Horizon European Innovation Council’s Transition Open Call. This program supports the transition of innovation activities from lab to market. It focuses on technological maturation and validation in relevant application environments, as well as developing a business case and model for future commercialization.
A Proven Path From Research to Resilient Crop Markets
Crop4clima has demonstrated the plant stress resilience benefits of our patent-protected TaCo pathway. Our innovation is now ready for the next stage of development with strategic partners, addressing the growing market demand for climate-resilient seeds.
Agriculture Needs Innovative Tools
This scenario urges innovative solutions to meet the rising global food demand while minimizing the environmental impact of farming.
Our Solution
Crop4Clima’s groundbreaking solution tackles these challenges all at once by integrating several key features into one crop.
Increased Yield
Our crops are carefully engineered to boost yield, ensuring greater food production without compromising the nutritional value and quality.
Carbon Sequestration
Our crop contributes to carbon sequestration, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping mitigate climate change.
Enhanced Drought Tolerance
Application
Rapeseed, also known as canola, is our first application, as it offers innate adaptability, yield potential, nutritional benefits, and existing cultivation infrastructure.
Our aim is to offer an oil-seed crop that can assimilate 60% more carbon dioxide from the air while requiring 20% less water intake than crops grown using standard agricultural practices.
By leveraging the power of metabolic optimization in rapeseed, we can pave the way for the application of our technology to other major C3 crops in the future, such as soybean, cotton, potato, wheat, rice, barley, etc.
Our Methodology: A Unique Metabolic Pathway for Better Yield
Our crop improvement approach uses metabolic optimization to bypass photorespiration, a growth-limiting plant process that dissipates energy and leads to the futile loss of CO2.
We leverage the groundbreaking TaCo pathway, a new metabolic pathway that recaptures the released CO₂ via photorespiration and reincorporates it in the carbon-fixating biosystem. The TaCo pathway was developed and validated by the FET Open project FutureAgriculture.
This innovative pathway has demonstrated remarkable potential in enhancing carbon uptake, improving drought tolerance, and reducing water usage and fertilization in model plants.
Through meticulous greenhouse and confined field trials, we are determined to assess the efficacy and potential of resilient rapeseed crops, meeting the surging demand for sustainable and low-impact food supply chains.
Our Positive Impacts
Empowering Farmers
Our crops can help farmers’ associations save on irrigation and fertilization costs, grow on marginal land without sacrificing productivity or quality and mostly contribute to reducing their carbon print.
Unlocking Inaccessible Land
Climate change will reshape agricultural land suitability, especially in southern Europe and developing nations. Our technology will help crops to grow in these expanding harsher conditions and contributes to global food security.