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，即可靠和准确地预测复杂的多基因性状；使高产和气候适应性强的作物品种、动物品种、农用化学和生物投入以及对养活日益增长的全球人口至关重要的基因编辑的开发成为可能。目前用于预测农业性状表现的方法使用的模型能力有限，无法解释基因和强烈环境因素之间的复杂相互作用。除了这些限制之外，测量复杂的性状还需要通过田间试验进行大量投资，这需要相当多的领域专业知识、土地和时间。市场需要一种可扩展的解决方案，以加快我们对复杂特征的理解和衡量它们的能力；特别是由于我们日益多变的气候带来的挑战，可持续性和弹性特征，如氮素利用效率、饲料效率和耐旱性，目前至关重要。TraitSeq的技术利用人工智能的尖端进步，能够利用复杂的基因表达和环境相互作用，以超出最先进的精度水平预测复杂的特征。通过应用TraitSeq的技术来发现生物标记物并生成准确的性状预测，农业技术公司有权在不进行田间试验的情况下筛选其基因品种和产品的复杂性状--潜在地节省数年和1,000,000 GB的产品开发成本。2022年，TraitSeq的团队参与了BBSRC的ICURE计划，通过该计划，我们与农业技术行业的35多家公司进行了互动，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，在各种应用中试验TraitSeq的技术。通过这些国际合作伙伴关系，TraitSeq将帮助开发有助于提高产量的作物和牲畜特征，同时减少一氧化二氮和甲烷的产生--农业中最有害的两种排放。英国创新的后续资金将使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负担能力和可扩展性。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(畜牧业)，极大地增加TraitSeq的市场机会，并使我们的技术能够对加速作物以外的农业特性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.