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Agriculture as a practice has existed for as long as human civilization. Throughout this time, new technologies have periodically enriched it. As a result, agriculture has become more efficient, time and cost-saving. This evolution saw human labor being replaced to a great extent, first by animals and then by machines. In this trajectory of growth, one of the latest additions has been the Minichromosome technology. 

What is Minichromosome Technology?

Minichromosomes are small structures present within cells. These structures – although small in size – can store large chunks of information through the genetic material they keep within. 

These small structures are crucial to agricultural geneticists as they can be used to improve plants by adding dozens of traits to the plant through them. For instance, they can make the plants more drought-tolerant or capable of utilizing nitrogen better. Interestingly, although such modifications can improve yield significantly, they do not alter a plant’s genes, resulting in a wider acceptance among regulatory authorities and farmers. 

While we will look into the features and specialties of the minichromosome technology in detail in the segments to come, we need to know its history to understand its purpose and objectives better. 

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The Genesis of Minichromosome Technology in Brief

The Minichromosome technology, also known as gene-stacking, grew from a discovery by Daphne Preuss, one of the most successful food and agriculture entrepreneurs in the world. 

Based in Sorrento, Maine, United States, Daphne Preuss has worn many hats in her long and illustrious career. From November 2006 to December 2018, Preuss served as the CEO of Chromatin Inc., known as Future Food as well.

According to Gregory Copenhaver, who worked on Preuss’s project where she was originally working with Arabidopsis Thaliana, a small mustard plant: 

“Daphne found a mutation with characteristics that let us develop a genetic mapping technique for plants. We devised a technique for identifying the centromere, the spot-on chromosomes that a cell grabs onto when it needs to move them during division. We were able to figure out how to catch hold of the centromere ourselves and use it to work with other plants.”

This was what led to the development of the minichromosome technology. Going ahead, Copenhaver and Preuss founded the company Chromatin Inc. and got the technology licensed to the company. And this is the brief story behind the genesis of the minichromosome technology. 

With this information in our hands, the next question that is quite obvious to come to our mind is why minichromosome technology gained momentum. There must be other similar research carried out at the time that considered leveraging plant genetics to better yield and production volume of crops. Copenhaver had an answer to it. 

What Made Minichromosome Technology Stand Out?

According to Copenhaver, it was already known how to alter plants by inserting genes into their chromosomes. However, the technologies that existed for decades suffered from randomness. There was no surety on what the output would be. 

Even if the gene could be inserted into an existing chromosome, its landing position could affect its functioning. The process also ran the risk of disrupting other genes during the insertion process. 

This uncertainty led to existing processes becoming cumbersome and difficult to carry out. After working with thousands of plants, researchers could only succeed in a limited number of cases where the alteration yielded the desired results. 

Minichromosome technology brought surety to the process. According to Copenhaver, the process made it “easier to pass on traits.” It made new plant breeding “faster, better, cheaper, and more predictable.”

How Far Has Minichromosome Technology Progressed?

Research on minichromosome technology has led to many revelatory insights so far. For instance, minichromosomes possess no genes of their own. This feature – along with its small size – helps minichromosomes work as super vectors to express foreign genes. Advantageously, in this process, they interfere minimally with the host growth and development patterns. 

The minichromosomes stay stable during mitosis and meiosis. This property helps inhabited genes to express and transmit from cell to cell, from one generation to the next. Adding, deleting, and replacing genes in minichromosomes is simple. All it requires is an SSR system: Simple Sequence Repeat. 

Minichromosome technology – as it stands today – is helpful to our agriculture practices in multiple ways. It can help develop plant genes that are herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant. 

• The first type of gene facilitates weed control. 
• The second type reduces the requirement for pesticides, bringing down agricultural costs and making crops healthier. 

Moreover, this technology prepares the ground for more effective genetic engineering to be carried out on crops and plants so that their yield increases. It has the potential to help grow more crops with the same quantity of natural resources. 

The development of artificial chromosome technology and effective gene assembly methods to presciently target and edit genomes are possible by continuously innovating on minichromosome technology. 

But why do we require the yield to increase while keeping the costs and usage of resources the same or preferably lower? It is because the global population is increasing, and the cultivable land we have at our disposal can not be increased. This mismatch of supply and demand is where yield-increasing technologies like minichromosomes come to the rescue. 

The Global Demand for Food Will Increase

According to the summary report presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world population could grow by over a third, or 2.3 billion people, between 2009 and 2050. This would lead to an enormous demand for food. 

For instance, the demand for cereals, for both food and animal feed uses, could reach some 3 billion tonnes by 2050. The report also estimates that feeding a global population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require increasing overall food production by nearly 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050. In developing countries, the growth should be almost 100 percent. 

The FAO believes that these targets could only be achieved by deploying yield-enhancing technologies. It clearly states that as much as 90 percent of the growth in crop production has to come from higher yields and increased cropping intensity, with the remainder coming from land expansion. 

While enhancing the efficiency of crop production and increasing the yield rate is a reality, there is also the need to make crops resistant to unpredictable weather arising as a by-product of climate change around the world. 

We have already seen that minichromosome technology helps in producing drought-resistant crops. However, to produce such crops at a larger scale, the world needs more and more investments flowing in from governments as well as large multinationals. The good thing is such examples already exist. 

If we follow the trail Chromatin Inc. created with its discovery, we would see that many large global companies have expressed interest in its technology for several years. First, we look at these expressions of interest, and then we will delve deeper into these companies to understand the relevant solutions they might have in this field.  

• In 2007, Chromatin granted Syngenta Biology Inc. a nonexclusive license to use the technology for corn and soybeans.
• Following Syngenta, the company also formed an agreement with Dow AgroSciences for research on combining its minichromosome technology with Dow’s technology. 
• It also signed an agreement with Bayer Crop-science to use the technology in its cotton plants. 

We will now look into the relevant yield-enhancing developments that these three multinationals have successfully carried out till then. 

1. Syngenta Biology Inc.

Syngenta has kept developing crops with seed trait technologies that are more efficient. Syngenta’s trait conversion accelerator has introduced corn seed products that use cutting-edge technologies to become ready for the market quickly. 

While it has continued assimilating technologies like the minichromosome, it has worked extensively to advance the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, plant transformation, and applied genomics. Its products, such as the Agrisure Artesian, Agrisure Duracade, Agrisure Viptera, and Enogen, have offered credible seed technology solutions to help farmers save their yield from unpredictable rainfall to destructive insects and pests.

On November 9th, 2023, Syngenta Group announced its financial results for the first nine months and third quarter of 2023. Sales for the first nine months of 2023 were US$24.3 billion, down 6 percent year-on-year. EBITDA was 22% lower compared to 2022.  

2. Dow AgroSciences

Dow Corporation has a range of crop solutions that include solutions to optimize plant growth while minimizing resource use. Dow ensures that its crop solutions help decrease loss by protecting crops from insects, weeds, and disease. It also delivers an efficient distribution of nutrients and water while enabling pesticide synthesis with reliable building blocks. 

Dow published its third quarter 2023 results on October 24, 2023. The company registered net sales of US$10.7 billion, down 24% versus the year-ago period. GAAP earnings per share was US$0.42, while operating earnings per share (EPS) was US$0.48, compared to US$1.11 in the year-ago period and $0.75 in the prior quarter.

3. Bayer Crop Science

Bayer Crop Sciences, part of Bayer Global, focuses on innovations around seeds and traits and crop protection. Its innovations have helped its biotechnology scientists to make targeted improvements within plant DNA. Its solutions help control weeds through built-in herbicide tolerance and help farmers preserve the genetic potential of their seed while growing more efficiently with substantially reduced environmental impact.

Crop protection benefits, according to Bayer, are enormous. The crop protection mechanism safeguards around 30 percent of yields worldwide, equivalent to 550 million tonnes of food that could feed more than 2 billion people. 

Bayer’s crop protection solution spectrum comprises herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. All its solutions are powered by cutting-edge chemistry, biological innovations, and data-driven field insights. The precise application of its technologies results in highly advanced seeds and traits. 

In the financial year 2022, Bayer Group registered group sales of 50.739 billion euros, up 8.7 percent on a currency- and portfolio-adjusted basis. EBITDA before special items was up by 20.9 percent to 13.513 billion euros.

The Future of Minichromosome Technology

Growing population, unpredictable climate, and the lack of possible growth in arable land across the world are factors that lead to the need for more and more advanced crop production technologies like minichromosomes. The most promising aspect of minichromosome technology is that it paves the way for more and more similar technologies to emerge.

Available research shows that efficient genetic changes can help a plant grow better despite having adverse conditions around it. Corn yields, for instance, have increased by 10%. Not only has their production increased, but these corns have become better with greater drought tolerance, higher lysine content, and increased ethanol-producing capabilities. 

Genetic engineering, built on technologies like minichromosomes, can resist potato blight while reducing the use of chemical fungicides by as high as 90 percent. Not only does potato farming have less impact on the environment now, but the produce has much fewer bruises and black spots. The storage capability of these potatoes has increased, and the lesser use of chemicals in producing them has made them less harmful to our health. 

Not only corn and potatoes but minichromosome technology also keeps improving the production of arctic apples, papaya varieties in Hawaii, summer squash, and zucchini. It has helped safeguard fruits from browning while preserving their nutritional value and taste. It has proved effective against ringspot virus, yellow mosaic virus, and many other similarly harmful varieties. It has even helped develop soybean oils that contain zero trans-fat, which are harmful to our cardiac health. 

Overall, the surging interest in innovative agricultural techniques like minichromosomes comes at a time when increasing crop yield rates is a priority worldwide, and that too, more sustainably with lesser carbon footprints. This is where minichromosome technology shines the brightest, as it helps achieve both substantially. Therefore, one can reasonably expect more investment and research fund influx in this space in the days to come.

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