SBIR Phase I: Engineering the Plant Microbiome to Reduce Disease in Crops

SBIR 第一阶段：改造植物微生物组以减少作物疾病

• 批准号: 2232769
• 负责人: Andrea Wallace
• 金额: $ 27.5万
• 依托单位: ROBIGO, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2232769&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Engineering; Plant; Microbiome

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the development of a platform technology that enables a novel mode of action for protecting crops from disease. Facing increasing disease pressure and a changing climate, growers around the world spend $80 billion on nearly six billion pounds of pesticides each year, and yet still experience yield losses of 20-40% due to pests and disease. Broad-acting, chemical pesticides - currently the industry standard - are losing both efficacy and public support as resistance to pesticides spreads and the negative environmental impacts become clear. There is a pressing need to fundamentally redesign crop treatments to create a more sustainable and efficient food system. Leveraging synthetic biology, CRISPR, and data science, this SBIR Phase I project addresses this need by developing a new class of microbial biopesticides that precisely target and kill crop pathogens without adversely affecting beneficial microbes, insect pollinators, or humans. With an initial focus on treating tomatoes (320,000 acres in the US, $32 million addressable market), this project sets the stage for providing solutions for major global markets like citrus ($600 million), olives ($1.8 billion), and rice ($2.7 billion). The project provides targeted solutions for bacterial diseases in agriculture. Historically overlooked and underserved by the agricultural community, bacterial diseases have become increasingly devastating over the past 10 years due to a lack of effective treatment options, growing antimicrobial resistance, and climate change driving higher disease pressures. Building from a prototype system, this SBIR Phase I project aims to engineer improvements that will increase the efficacy and tractability of the microbial biopesticide in outdoor agricultural environments. This includes applying molecular biology techniques to increase microbial colonization within complex microflora to increase product efficacy, extend microbial persistence in plants to provide longer protection, and reduce the rate of resistance to extend product lifetimes. Furthermore, this project will develop a bioinformatics algorithm to better program the microbes to specifically target only the disease-causing pathogens. Finally, the team will demonstrate product efficacy in lab-grown tomato plants with the goal of surpassing the industry standard of 70% efficacy and will compare performance to two industry standard chemical pesticides. Successful completion of this project will result in a novel method to introduce protective traits to crops without genetically modifying the plant itself.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是开发一种平台技术，该技术能够实现保护作物免受疾病侵害的新行动模式。面对不断增加的疾病压力和不断变化的气候，世界各地的种植者每年花费800亿美元购买近60亿磅农药，但由于病虫害，产量仍损失20-40%。广泛作用的化学农药--目前的行业标准--正在失去效力和公众支持，因为对农药的耐药性蔓延，负面环境影响变得明显。迫切需要从根本上重新设计作物处理方法，以创造一个更可持续和更有效的粮食系统。利用合成生物学、CRISPR和数据科学，SBIR第一阶段项目通过开发一类新的微生物生物农药来满足这一需求，这些生物农药可以精确地靶向和杀死作物病原体，而不会对有益微生物、昆虫授粉者或人类产生不利影响。该项目最初的重点是处理西红柿（美国32万英亩，3200万美元的目标市场），为柑橘（6亿美元），橄榄（18亿美元）和大米（27亿美元）等主要全球市场提供解决方案奠定了基础。该项目为农业中的细菌性疾病提供了有针对性的解决方案。细菌性疾病在历史上被农业界忽视和服务不足，在过去10年中，由于缺乏有效的治疗方案，抗生素耐药性不断增加，以及气候变化导致疾病压力增加，细菌性疾病变得越来越具有破坏性。SBIR第一阶段项目以原型系统为基础，旨在设计改进，以提高微生物生物农药在户外农业环境中的功效和易处理性。这包括应用分子生物学技术来增加复杂微生物区系中的微生物定植，以提高产品功效，延长植物中的微生物持久性以提供更长的保护，并降低抗性率以延长产品寿命。此外，该项目还将开发一种生物信息学算法，以更好地编程微生物，使其只针对致病病原体。最后，该团队将在实验室种植的番茄植物中展示产品功效，目标是超过70%功效的行业标准，并将性能与两种行业标准化学农药进行比较。该项目的成功完成将产生一种新的方法，将保护性性状引入作物，而无需对植物本身进行基因改造。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。