July 20, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

In order to support the world’s booming population growth, and to mitigate the fallout to our food systems from geopolitical conflicts, Napigen CEO and co-founder Dr. Hajime Sakai noted that we will need much more grain than farmers can currently produce. 

As a first step, Napigen has targeted wheat and rice as the two crops where technology can create the most impact.

In support of the company’s work, The Grantham Foundation and RA Capital Management have led $7.8 million in Seed funding, which was also joined by Thrive SVG Ventures, MARSBIO, and the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.

Napigen is a novel gene editing company that specializes in cytoplasmic genomes, such as mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA, that can result in improvements for agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and human healthcare.

With a mission to harness the potentials of organelles, Napigen is approaching the challenges associated with certain applications of CRISPR technology. Historically, CRISPR has been widely used to engineer nuclear DNA in many organisms. But mitochondria and chloroplasts, often referred to as the “powerhouse cells” because they are two special cellular components that contain their own DNA and are key to creating energy for cellular growth, have been harder to target due to the challenges of delivering RNA or DNA into organelles.

The company has previously leveraged CRISPR technology for genome editing of organellar DNA in yeast and algae [https://peerj.com/articles/8362/]. But more recently, has applied its technology to gene editing of plant mitochondrial DNA in rice. 

Rice – a crop that accounts for approximately 25 percent of global calorie consumption – is also being threatened. More than 3.5 billion people get more than 20 percent of their calories from rice, and demand continues to rise. However, over the next century, the suitability of rice production land in Asia could fall by half due to the effects of climate change on natural resources and land, according to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The economic effects and resulting higher food prices will lead to greater food insecurity in regions such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where a greater portion of household income, compared to the U.S. or Europe, is allocated to food.

Likewise, recent history has shown us how universally key wheat is to the human diet on a global scale – and just how delicately our supply chains and stockpiles are balanced. Based on acreage and total production volume, wheat is the second largest grain in production. Of which, over 80 percent is used to make flour. In marketing year 2020/2021, worldwide production totaled more than 772 million metric tons. However, an incredible 86 percent of this supply comes from only seven countries, with only three countries stockpiling 68 percent of global reserves, according to Earth.org.

Already highly vulnerable, any disruption to wheat production or supply chains due to situations brought on by climate change or geopolitical conflicts, such as a result of the war in Ukraine (between two of the world’s top wheat suppliers), can result in widespread instability and lack of food security. 

With the funding gained through this round, Napigen plans to apply its mitochondrial gene editing technology for the hybrid seed production of these two critical food crops. Additionally, the company will use its technology to develop mitochondrial expression systems useful for plant mitochondria.

“We need much more grains than people can produce now to support the steep population growth, a situation that is being made worse by geopolitical conflicts,” said Dr. Sakai.

“This can only be possible by breaking the biological yield limit of crop plants, which is exactly what we are aiming to do. Yield increases benefit both agriculture and environmental protection by reducing the need for deforestation to create new farmland, as well as decreasing the use of agricultural chemicals.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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