Cytotrait receives ARIA funding for crop research

Cytotrait, a spinout company from The University of Manchester, has been awarded a £498,113 grant to expand its cutting-edge research on organelle gene expression and the development of a novel mechanism to create hybrid wheat, one of the largest food crops in the world.

Their approach addresses major barriers to reliable hybrid seed production in crop plants like wheat. To achieve this, the team will focus on stable mitochondrial transformation, which involves precisely inserting specific genes into the plant's mitochondria, then using programmable editor genes to control their function. This approach could not only revolutionise hybrid seed production but also open new pathways to engineer other valuable traits directly within a plant's mitochondria.