New ARIA award will aim to deliver a revolution in sustainable agriculture

The ARIA Synthetic Plants programme will catalyse a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient, and sustainable to help future-proof our agricultural system.

Oxford Plastid Transformation for an Improved Sustainable Economy: a revolution in plastid engineering for sustainable agricultural production (the OPTIMiSE project) is an ambitious research effort aimed at transforming agriculture to address one of humanity’s most pressing challenges: producing enough food for a growing population while adapting to climate change and reducing environmental impacts.

The project is combining the research expertise of Professor Steve Kelly and Professor Francesco Licausi from the Department of Biology with Professor Chris O’Callaghan from the Nuffield Department of Medicine and industry scientists from Wild Bioscience Ltd. This interdisciplinary project will focus on developing new ways to make crops more productive and more resilient to stress. These advancements are urgently needed as conventional approaches to improving crops are unable to keep pace with the twin pressures of increasing demand and climate change.

Professor Licausi, our Professor of Molecular Plant Physiology, will use DNA transformation approaches to enable complete chloroplast genome replacement in potato.

The project will focus on creating enhanced potato plants with synthetic chloroplast genomes. These improvements are designed to meet strict regulatory standards, aligning with international definitions of “precision bred organisms” rather than genetically modified crops, making them more acceptable to farmers and policymakers worldwide. The team then plans to extend this technology to wheat, one of the most important global food crops. Ultimately, the project aims to set the stage for applying these techniques to other crops.

Find out more about the researchers and this exciting project.