Project to enable commercial production of hybrid wheat varieties using Cytotrait’s proprietary organelle editing platform, MOSS
Funding provided by the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency Programmable Plants opportunity space
Research project in collaboration with Dr Sadiye Hayta, Wheat Transformation Lead, John Innes Centre
Manchester, UK, 1 September 2025: Cytotrait, a biotechnology company harnessing a unique organelle editing approach to develop new crop traits for food and agriculture, today announced it has been awarded £498,113 in funding from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). The funding will enable Cytotrait to expand research into organelle gene expression and explore the development of a novel mechanism for creating hybrid varieties of one of the world’s largest food crops, wheat.
The research will utilise Cytotrait’s proprietary MOSS (‘Mutant Organelle Selection System’) technology to enable the commercial production of hybrid wheat varieties, a longstanding goal of breeders. As part of this, Cytotrait will work collaboratively with Dr Sadiye Hayta, Wheat Transformation Lead at the John Innes Centre to edit the mitochondrial wheat genome with a gene for cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS). In doing so, the team would validate a novel mechanism to generate hybrid wheat varieties with improved yields and enhanced tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Additionally, hybrid wheat varieties can reduce carbon emissions, thus improving the sustainability of crop production.
MOSS is a unique organelle editing approach that can be used to introduce endogenous gene edits or transgenes directly into chloroplasts and mitochondria. Cytotrait’s technology utilises programmable nucleases to efficiently remove unmodified gene copies and rapidly achieve homoplasmy. This allows the stable engineering of traits with localized and high-level expression, offering broad applications across yield, pest and disease resistance, hybrid crop development and the introduction of novel food or industrial crop traits.
The funding was awarded through ARIA’s Programmable Plants opportunity space, which explores how plants can be reprogrammed to help solve major global challenges such as food insecurity, climate change, and environmental degradation.
Dr Junwei Ji, Founder, Cytotrait, said: “The support from ARIA is a huge step forward for us and a vote of confidence in what MOSS can achieve. The ability to make wheat hybrids has long been an aim of breeders and we believe we are well positioned to translate this goal into reality by drawing on the potential offered by organelle gene editing. We are grateful for all the support we’ve had from Innovation Factory and The University of Manchester, and look forward to sharing positive results from the Company and this research project.”
Cytotrait has previously received £267,000 in grant funding and investment from Innovate UK’s ICURe programme and the Northern Triangle Talent Project, funded by the Research England Connecting Capability Fund, as well as pre-seed investment from the University of Manchester Innovation Factory. The Company was spun-out from the University of Manchester with support from the Innovation Factory and the wider university ecosystem, including early proof of principle funding, IP support and access to lab space and equipment.
ENDS
Please note: Cytotrait is not part of ARIA and its team members are not employed by ARIA. The company is an independent award recipient funded through ARIA’s Programmable Plants programme. For more information, visit: https://www.aria.org.uk