8-2009-2260  |  Platform for seed manipulation enabling rapid introduction of traits to established plant varieties

Ilan Sela, HUJI, Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, Entomology

Haim Rabinowitch, HUJI, Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences

Enables non-transgenic, expression or silencing of desired traits in plants

 

Categories	Agriculture, Field Crops, Vegetables, Plant Breeding, Seeds, Seed production, Flowers/Ornamentals, Horticulture
Development Stage	Proof of Concept
Patent Status	PCT patent application filed

Highlights

• Revolutionary plant improvement technology.
• Enables expression of desired trait or entire metabolic pathway or silencing of a trait or a pathogen at will.
• Main results: initial experiments with tomato seeds resulted in 50% success in expression of a reporter gene, i.e., 50% of the plants raised from the treated seed carried the desired gene.
• Excluding the resulting effect(s) of the newly introduced gene or metabolic pathway, the phenotypic expression of the treated plants remains unchanged.

Our Innovation

Platform set of DNA constructs, termed IL60, capable of expressing or silencing target genes of many plants. The IL60 components are introduced into cells, replicate inside the tissue, spread throughout the plant, and express (or silence) target genes in a non-transgenic manner.

Key Features

• Seed producers can easily adapt any successful variety to changing situations, such as introduction of specific resistance to a newly developed threat or to a newly invading pathogen; introducing specific quality or structural traits into a given variety as required by specific population of consumers and growers.
• Significantly augment the production of certain secondary metabolites; introduction of specific metabolic pathway into foreign genotype. 
• Silence specific genes as needed. 

Development Milestones

• Seeking industrial collaboration for treatment optimization and testing the system on additional plant species such as corn, peppers, cucurbits and increase the success rate to 100%.

The Opportunity

• Many countries do not permit the use of engineered plants because of the risk of modified genes spread to wild populations, effect on the environment and safety of the consumers. This technology reduces these risks.

Contact for more information:
Ziv Shomroni , VP Licensing Agriculture and Natural Sciences, +972-2-6586688

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