An American company is gene editing roots to make them grow larger so plants can better tolerate drought and sequester more carbon.

Cquesta CEO Michael Ott told the Agri Tech Venture Forum in Ontario earlier this spring that half the human impact on carbon released to the atmosphere can be accounted for if nature can be made 2.5 per cent more efficient.

Cquesta works with seed researchers and seed companies to put its process into the roots of commercial crops.

“We’re a root architecture modification company, so I can do whatever you want. I can make it skinny or fat or wider, shallow or narrow, deep or whatever,” says Ott.

The company’s quickest route to market is carbon, and roots are the key to greater sequestration.

He says when carbon is moved deeper into the soil, it stays there longer. This addresses the issue of plowing that can move sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere.

“As you go down in the soil, oxygen levels decrease, microbial activity decreases and when that carbon sticks around for a lot longer, so if you’re able to get a low of 30 centimetres, you can see that 80 per cent of that carbon is more than 50 years old.”

The company has licensed nine patents from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where researchers have been working on gene editing plants. The company is based in Chicago and is building a “plant transformation facility” in St. Louis.

Its goal is to enhance roots at no cost to farmers. Cquesta and its seed company partners will benefit from helping the environment and by selling carbon credits.

“All farmers love deep roots because they basically help tolerate weather inconsistencies,” says Ott.

The challenge for the company is to reach the scale needed to make a profit.

“When farmers are buying seeds, they are buying seeds with six to 10 traits. We want there to be one more trait labelled deep roots slash carbon sequestration that is given to them for free.”

The other major partners are seed companies to which Cquesta plans to licence its technology. Then it plans to get paid for the carbon its root system sequesters and “paying everyone back through the system.”

The company just completed a $6-million funding round. It sees a lot of potential in the large acreage planted to canola in Canada, and that’s why Ott was at the Canadian venture forum event.

The first product the company will bring to market in two to three years is enhanced roots in cover crops. Then it plans soybeans and canola as its first large acreage crops in three to five years. Other crops like corn will follow in five to seven years, Ott says.

Source: Alberta Farmer Express