STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- A soil fungus threatens the Cavendish banana with extinction.
- Elo Life Systems uses gene editing for banana resistance.
- Triangle biotechs are designing crops to combat climate change.
The world’s most popular type of banana is heading toward extinction.
A soil fungus is attacking the Cavendish banana variety that dominates grocery store shelves, and it is a threat that is only worsening as warmer temperatures and more severe storms have allowed the fungus to establish itself in places not previously affected.
“The plants are facing more and more of a threat, and we feel it on the fields,” said Todd Rands, CEO of Elo Life Systems. “Agriculture is on the front lines of the war against climate change.”
Elo Life Systems is a biotechnology company in Research Triangle Park that is tackling challenges related to food and agriculture through molecular farming. Essentially, the company is identifying ingredients in nature that can be created and introduced to other plants to solve specific problems.
With the banana, for instance, Elo is exploring the near and distant relatives of the Cavendish and other plant species to find natural sources of resistance against the fungus. After identifying those sources, the company, through gene editing, makes changes to the Cavendish with the aim of creating the same resistance to the fungus.
“The genetic scissors can come in and make those one or two changes and take that natural change that was already out there and allow that same change to exist in the crop we care about,” Rands said.
Elo is one of many companies in the Triangle area leveraging different high-tech tools to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges affecting the crops that farmers grow and the food that people eat.
Farmers and growers are facing pressure to increase productivity to feed an evergrowing global population at a time when resources are becoming more constrained, such as the loss of cropland due to urbanization or a shortage in basic fertilizer materials. Further complicating the situation is a changing climate, the effects of which can be seen in North Carolina and elsewhere globally.
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