Developments in plant reproduction made at USU could lead to a reduction in cost of seeds for farmers globally
A breakthrough in plant-seed technology is being developed at Utah State University that has the potential to affect the costs involved in farming world-wide. “This could be an integral part of the seed industry worldwide, which is an $18 billion industry in the United States alone per year,” John Carman, a professor of plant genetics, said. The project began three years ago, and has led to two patents being filed by the university for apomictic plants, which are plants that reproduce asexually, or without pollination, Carman, the inventor of these patents, said. “This process should reduce that cost [for seed production] to well below 50 percent, at least in half and probably a lot more,” Carman said. The cost for seed production varies on the type of seed. Hybrid seeds, a genetically inbred type which produces high-yielding plants, are expensive to produce, Carman said. “In the United States, seed companies spend about $600 million a year to produce hybrid seed for corn alone,” Carman said. The other way to produce seed is to let plants produce it naturally, which is much less costly to do, he said. The process they are developing creates plants that can be hybrids, and then reproduce asexually, which produces exact replicas of the original plant. Thus, the high-yielding seed can be derived using the less costly method of naturally letting plants produce the seed, Carman said. “We believe it could be commercially available within three to four years,” he said. An additional benefit to this development is the humanitarian aspect, he said. Hybrid crops are typically grown by wealthy countries where farmers can afford to purchase the seed, Carman said. “Subsistence farmers in developing countries will be able to benefit from hybrid yields for the first time,” he said. Apomictic plants will reduce costs and allow these plants to be grown in developing countries through the efforts of international agricultural organizations which develop crops for third world countries, Carman said. Carman has been studying this type of plant for the past 20 years, he said. Carman and his team began by looking at plants who evolve this trait naturally in nature. “It’s a low frequency anomaly in nature. It occurs in fairly common plants, like dandelions. Because the seeds are formed asexually, all progeny are exactly the same and identical to the mother plant,” Carman said. These apomictic hybrids maintain their vigor year after year, he said. So far they have produced model plant systems for agricultural and non-agricultural plants, Carman said. Since the patents were filed by the university, they have been exclusively licensed to Carman’s start-up company, Apomyx Inc., Carman said. He is the founder and president. “We have the potential to commercially develop products that could affect global agriculture,” Kent Schultz, CEO of the company, said. The first commercial product they will have on the market will be grain sorghum, a feed grain for livestock, Schultz said. It will be available in the next four to five years. In an additional three to four years, they will also have wheat, potentially rice and corn. They have strategic alliances with particular seed companies and corporations for various seed types, Carman said. This project is funded through venture capital money. The company is privately held. “We will most definitely become a major player. If Apomyx Inc. is successful, this will change the way in which plant breeding is conducted worldwide,” Carman said. USU has a small equity ownership in the company and has royalty rights to the technology because the project was worked on and discovered here, as part of the license agreement, Carman said. “It can have a great impact for companies and for the owners of small pieces of land who can buy these types of seeds when they will be produced. It will make it much cheaper,” said Tamara Naumova, a plant embryologist from Russia who has worked with this project twice.