TraitSeq – An AI Technology Platform for Accelerating Trait Development in Agriculture

TraitSeq正在解决农业技术领域的重大挑战，即可靠、准确地预测复杂的多基因性状；促进高产和适应气候变化的作物品种、动物品种、农用化学和生物投入品以及基因编辑的发展，这些对养活日益增长的全球人口至关重要。目前用于预测农业性状表现的方法使用的模型在解释基因和强环境因素之间复杂相互作用的能力方面受到限制。除了这些限制之外，测量复杂的性状需要通过实地试验进行大量投资，这需要相当多的领域专业知识、土地和时间。市场需要一个可扩展的解决方案来加速我们对复杂特征的理解和衡量它们的能力；尤其是可持续性和弹性特征，如氮利用效率、饲料效率和耐旱性，由于我们日益多变的气候带来的挑战，目前至关重要。TraitSeq的技术利用了人工智能领域的尖端技术，能够利用复杂的基因表达和环境相互作用来预测复杂的性状，其准确性超过了最先进的水平。通过应用TraitSeq的技术来发现生物标志物并产生准确的性状预测，农业科技公司可以在不进行田间试验的情况下筛选其遗传品种和产品的复杂性状，这可能节省数年时间和100万英镑的产品开发成本。2022年，TraitSeq的团队参加了BBSRC的ICURe计划，通过该计划，我们与农业技术领域的35家公司进行了互动，并确定了一套关于我们的技术如何满足市场需求的价值主张。自参与ICURe以来，该团队利用这些价值主张产生了巨大的市场吸引力，并预计在2023年与5家公司合作，在各种应用中试用TraitSeq的技术。通过这些国际伙伴关系，TraitSeq将帮助开发作物和牲畜性状，这些性状有助于提高产量，同时减少农业中最有害的两种排放物——一氧化二氮和甲烷的产生。Innovate UK的后续资金将使TraitSeq能够在商业环境中验证和展示我们的技术，同时开发它以提高其可负担性和可扩展性。这笔资金将使我们能够将我们的技术应用到一个新的领域（牲畜养殖），大大增加TraitSeq的市场机会，并使我们的技术对加速农作物以外的农业性状的发展产生重大影响。

TraitSeq is addressing the significant challenge in the agritech sector of predicting complex, polygenic traits reliably and accurately; enabling the development of high-yielding and climate-resilient crop varieties, animal breeds, agrochemical and biological inputs, and gene edits that are critical to feeding an increasing global population.Current methods for predicting trait performance in agriculture use models that are limited in their ability to account for complex interactions between genes and strong environmental factors. In addition to these limitations, measuring complex traits requires a significant investment through field trials that require considerable domain expertise, land, and time. The market needs a scalable solution to accelerate our understanding of complex traits and the ability to measure them; especially as sustainability and resilience traits such as nitrogen-use efficiency, feed efficiency, and drought tolerance are currently of paramount importance due to challenges posed by our increasingly volatile climate.TraitSeq's technology exploits cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence that are capable of harnessing complex gene expression and environmental interactions to predict complex traits at beyond state-of-the-art levels of accuracy. Through applying TraitSeq's technology to discover biomarkers and generate accurate trait predictions, agritech companies are empowered to screen their genetic varieties and products for complex traits without performing field trials -- potentially saving years and £1,000,000s in product development.In 2022, TraitSeq's team participated in BBSRC's ICURe Programme through which we interacted with over 35 companies in the agritech sector and identified a set of value propositions for how our technology can address the market's needs. Since participating in ICURe, the team has leveraged these value propositions to generate significant market traction and expects to partner with 5 companies in 2023 to trial TraitSeq's technology across a variety of applications.Through these international partnerships, TraitSeq will help develop crop and livestock traits that contribute to increased yields whilst reducing nitrous oxide and methane production -- two of the most harmful emissions in agriculture.Innovate UK's Follow-on Funding will enable TraitSeq to validate and demonstrate our technology in commercial environments whilst developing it to improve its affordability and scalability. This funding will allow us to apply our technology to a new sector (livestock breeding), considerably increasing TraitSeq's market opportunities and enabling our technology to make a significant impact on accelerating the development of agricultural traits beyond crops.