7 million dollars in funding: Rainbow Crops drives climate-resilient crops forward

The Belgian AgTech company Rainbow Crops has received a grant of 7 million US dollars from the Gates Foundation. The grant is intended to accelerate the development of climate-resilient crops. This is primarily intended for regions that are severely affected by periods of heat and drought.

The funds will be used to further develop the company's proprietary Trait Foundry™ platform, which enables new genetic approaches to improve germination, plant vitality and yield stability under extreme climatic conditions.

Focus on heat and drought tolerance

The aim of the project is to develop innovative ways to identify and combine suitable alleles to improve germination and early plant development under stress conditions. A particular focus is on the performance of seedlings under heat and water stress. This is a very important point for yield security in many regions of the world.

The initial focus will be on maize, sorghum and rice. These crops are essential for global food security, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Platform for complex agronomic traits

The Trait Foundry™ platform combines multiplex genome editing, artificial intelligence, classical breeding and phenotyping. This enables the targeted identification and merging of multiple genetic variants that control complex agronomic traits.

In contrast to traditional breeding approaches or single-gene strategies, the approach addresses traits that are influenced by several interacting genes. These include drought tolerance or plant vigor, for example. The platform has already been validated end-to-end in maize and demonstrated the feasibility of multiplex genome editing across multiple traits.

Scientific basis from research

The technology is based on many years of research at the VIB, an institute for life sciences in Belgium. Rainbow Crops is a spin-off from the laboratory of Professor Hilde Nelissen and continues to work closely with her research group as well as the VIB Transformation Facility and the VIB Agro-Incubator.

In addition to academic cooperation, the company also plans to work with industrial partners, including in the area of scientific methods and data exchange, to accelerate progress in the field of climate-resilient plants.

Contribution to global food security

The funding is intended not only to build up scientific knowledge, but also to create a basis for future breeding programs. In the long term, the genetic building blocks developed could help to make seeds more resilient to climate stress and support small farmers in particularly vulnerable regions.