Bananas, Biotech, and Beyond: Gene Editing with Tropic

Dr. Eyal Maori, co-founder of Tropic, is using advanced gene editing technologies to revolutionize tropical crops such as bananas, rice, and coffee. The conversation explores how Tropic developed proprietary tools like Agrotrop and GEiGS to overcome the unique challenges of editing tropical crops. Dr. Maori also highlights Tropic’s work on non-browning and longer shelf-life bananas, engagement with growers, the evolving regulatory landscape, and the company's vision to bring meaningful innovation to tropical regions where food security is most urgent. 

Transcript

Speaker 1:

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Adrian:

Welcome to AGTech360. Today we're joined by Eyal Maori, co-founder of Tropic Biosciences, an AGTech company pushing the boundaries of innovation in tropical crops through advanced gene editing technologies. We're going to explore how Tropic is transforming the future of specialty crops like bananas, rice, and coffee, tackling key challenges along the way and what the future holds for gene editing in agriculture. So let's dive in, and thank you for joining me, Eyal.

Eyal Maori:

Thank you for inviting me, Adrian. Greatly appreciated, and I look forward to our conversation.Adrian:

Yeah, me too. So let's start by asking you a little bit about your personal journey and how did you get to pursue your career here in science and in AGTech?

Eyal Maori:

I'm introduced to R&D in somewhat unusual way. So I grew up in Israel and we all have to serve the army. It's mandatory. And I served in an R&D unit, and that happened over 25 years ago, and I was quite inspired by the R&D processes and the problem solving, but I wanted to be a biologist. So I completed my service. And after traveling in the world for a while back doing backpacking, I started my academic journey and I did a PhD in virology and RNA biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the beginning I was very applied, so the motto in the unit I was trained was, we don't invent wheels, we turn wheels to roll swords. And so I came very practical, very pragmatic and quickly when I realized what does it mean molecular biology and the genome, and I was absolutely, absolutely fascinated.

And very quickly I tend to be passionate about fundamental research. However, later on, life being ironic in my PhD, the virus we discovered it's a honey bee virus, was then linked to the colony collapse disorder when bees started to disappear all over the world. And I was astonished by the impact and I had the chance to meet a few devastated beekeepers. And I realized that with all respect, which I have a lot of passion to fundamental research, there is lots of hope that society and people put into science. And that's where I developed back my interest to provide impact in real world. So that's how it started. And then my PhD developed to be a startup company that we developed RNA-based essentially therapeutics for honeybees. It's a little bit like Moderna, but for bees in 2007. And that startup was acquired by Monsanto three and a half years later. And that really was how I was introduced to the AGTech.

Adrian:

I mean, Tropic is obviously known for its focus on tropical crops, which is I would say somewhat of a niche area in the AGTech space. I mean you may not agree with that, but certainly a lot of the AGTech companies are focused on the standard root crops or specialty crops that are grown in the US or Europe. So what drew you particularly to these types of crops?

Eyal Maori:

I would say that I agree, it's considered as a niche area, the tropical crops, and this is one of the reasons Gilad and I decided to focus on that area. So early days, our vision, and it's still our vision, is to introduce innovation to places, food and people who need it most. And then we analyzed and looking at the globe, you must know that phrase "By 2050, the world population is going to grow around 20%." But then when you analyze different areas in the world, you would see that some parts in Europe actually shrinking. So the population growth in Italy is -12%. UK is doing okay, 6%. USA, where America now 11. But when you look at the tropics, Guatemala, 44% growth. Kenya 63%. Philippines, 39. So actually the people who need the food are in the tropics. And then when you look at their economical state, right?

So you and I probably spend six to 10% of our income on food. But when you look at the people at the tropics, they spend 40 to 50% of the income on food. And that's a lot. So when you probably also experience the food prices have risen a lot.

Adrian: Sure.

Eyal Maori:

So we feel it. So then what about the people in the tropics? So realizing that we have identified the place of the tropics and then the food. So when we looked at the food, okay, where can we impact? And you pointed out that tropical crops are not the mainstream. And as a young startup, we couldn't compete with the giants, right? They focused on corn and soy and they owned the germplasm. We didn't feel that we can compete or add enough impact and value and focusing on banana and coffee, tropical crops, that very little innovation has been introduced to them traditionally, we felt this is the right place. So that's how we found the place, the food and the communities that needs it most.

Adrian:

I mean that makes perfect sense. So let's talk about some of the technologies that you're applying to these tropical crops. So you're using genome editing to address some really big challenges that we're seeing in these crops. Can you explain a little bit about the technology that Tropic uses and what sets your gene editing platform apart from perhaps other tools that other companies are using?

Eyal Maori:

Yes, yes, of course. So being one of the gene editing pioneering companies started 2016. So the gene editing really started in the industry in 2015, plus, minus. We had to solve problems that had no solutions just because it was really early days. Now working with an asexual crop like banana and working with a crop that it's almost like an orphan crop, so not very much innovation or established tools have been developed, we had to innovate in order to develop our products. And the first example is how would you introduce gene editing without leaving the gene editing transgene in the genome of the banana? Because banana is asexual, you cannot segregate or breed out the transgene. And that's the mainstream. That's how usually people used to do it or still do it. So we had to develop a technology, and I can share it's called Agrotrop for example. We developed an agrobacterium mutant that delivers very efficiently the key DNA that encodes for the CRISPR machinery, but then the DNA doesn't integrate. And that's how we managed to edit the banana genes, but leave the banana transgene free.
So that's a key technology, but also a non-transgenic selection. So once you edit the banana, but there are millions of banana cells that's going to regenerate into plants, how would you find the one? And early days we didn't have these tools. We actually screened I think more than 20,000 banana plants and we didn't find even one. But with Agrotrop now it's very robust. And then lastly, when we started looking at disease resistance, how could you develop non-transgenic disease resistance using gene editing? And there is no obvious answer, definitely not in 2016.

And then we came up with a technology that it's now established in our pipelines and commercialized others called GEiGS. GEiGS stands for gene editing induced gene silencing. And the core principle is editing of RNAi genes in a non-transgenic way. So very minimalistic editing. It can be down to five nucleotides. And by doing so, we redirect their silencing activity from the original target to any target of choice. That can be another endogenous genes if you would like to increase yield. But that can be targeting pathogens such as viruses, fungi, nematodes, and others. And that has been a very exciting technology that we now have other players in the industry licensing it to develop traits.

Speaker 1:

The North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative impacts lives through innovative applications and discoveries. By leveraging cutting edge research and technology, we address global challenges related to agriculture, sustainability, and human health.

Adrian:

That's great. So you mentioned bananas a couple of times. So let's talk about your banana project. I mean, you've obviously made... It's drawn a lot of attention even over here in the US. So tell me a little bit about that project. What were the challenges? You've mentioned some of them I think, but where are you today with that project?

Eyal Maori:

Challenges at the beginning, as I mentioned before, because not very much research and development has been introduced to banana, especially not with regards to molecular biology and genome editing. So the immediate challenges was one, how to generate embryogenic cell suspension. So the material that actually has regeneration capacity. When we started there were probably five places in the world and five, seven places. And in that places there is one special person that it's almost like an art and we had to solve that. So this is one challenge. Second is to master the crop. How do you have really robust transformation, regeneration, genotyping pipeline? I mentioned also the non-transgenic editing. So how would you introduce genetic elements without leaving them inside the cell? Indeed, now we have a robust product development pipeline, and the first product is our non-browning banana. And there is a reason why the non-browning bananas and the second product to be launching a few months is the bananas with extended shelf life.

There is a reason these are the first, we call them the low-hanging fruit traits, because early days, if you look at us, if you look at Pairwise with the seedless blackberries, Cibus, Calyxt, so they're all different oil compositions in soy, Benson Hill, high protein, all the traits that were developed by the early companies, early pioneering companies were quality traits. And the reason is that the link between the gene and the phenotype and the trait is very well established. In other words, we knew very well which genes to target, and that's how it started. We looked for the easy traits to develop. GEiGS now allows us to develop disease resistance because we don't need to discover banana genes. We always said Tropic is too small and back then too young to discover genes and GEiGS allows us to bypass the gene discovery. And now with this technology, we can directly attack the pathogen without the need to discover the genes because the genes of the pathogens are very well known.

Adrian:

So yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship that Tropic has with banana growers? I mean, how have you taken their input, for instance, to develop these concepts and how do you work with growers?Eyal Maori:

Yes, absolutely. Growers are very important to us simply because they are the people who needs innovation. And I will explain more specifically with regards to banana why. The banana industry for quite a while now has been susceptible, has been fragile. And the reason is that if you look at the prices of bananas since the '80s, the price has been quite stable. So in the '80s, I think it was 30 cents per pound, and now 45 years later, it's only around 60 cent per pound. If you compare it to other food, the price, the index and the inflation, essentially the difference is so striking that bananas now are cheaper than they used to be in the '80s. Now banana is asexual. So it's essentially a clone. And that brings with it genetic susceptibility. So on one hand it's a fantastic fruit. By the way, it's the most produced and consumed fruit in the world.

But because a lack of genetic diversity, we see now increased susceptibility to diseases. So you have the Panama disease, you have the Black sigatoka, another fungal devastating disease. So you have that threat. What else happens? We have production costs increasing because of inflation. So salaries, antifungals, you have different criteria of different markets, fair trade, et cetera. So the profit margins have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. And that's really challenging. And the growers are essentially desperate to increase value, right? Because when every grower essentially sells the same product, the same Cavendish bananas, they compete on price. So you could perfect the supply chain, but in the end of the day, then you compete on price.

Now what Tropic is doing is offering the growers added value. So we are offering the growers, but we are also offering the importers, the distributors, and also the consumers more value, for example, the non-browning bananas to reduce waste. So we communicate tightly with growers. We validate that indeed what we want to do is of interest. We engage them in the development, so they come and visit field trials. We learn from them what would be ideal, what would be good enough, and we continuously build the trust by being open, transparent, and it is essential for us in growing as a company.

Adrian:

And with all that said then, what has been the reaction of growers? How do you see the adoption of these particular traits, but also future developments that you'll no doubt make?

Eyal Maori:

I can tell you that relatively quickly, almost all the largest banana companies showed commercial interest and high engagement with Tropic. This is one because they realize they know very well how fragile the sustainability of the industry. This is one. So first of all, they like the approach. Second, they appreciate very much the traits because when we think about traits and we validate them with the growers and then the industry leaders. So they are enthusiastic about the approach, they're enthusiastic about the traits, the specific traits that we develop, and I can already share with you, they're very enthusiastic about the bananas that we produce. So they have seen the non-browning bananas in the field. They have seen the bananas themselves, and they are excited about it.

Adrian:

So let's talk a little bit about the regulatory landscape, which is evolving when it comes to gene edited crops around the world. So how have you as a company navigated these inconsistencies and the fact you are working in various countries around the world now with your product?

Eyal Maori:

Yes. I think the regulatory was the biggest question mark for Tropic early days. When we started in 2016, the regulatory landscape of gene editing was almost theoretical. So we had to apply forward-thinking and we in a way took a bet that the regulatory landscape will shape and establish while in parallel we're developing our products. And luckily that is the case. That is the case. So I can tell you that all the major export and production countries, for example, Guatemala, Colombia, Philippines, Costa Rica, all of them have established regulatory path for development and commercialization of gene edited crops. And in some of them Tropic's bananas are the very first product to be approved. So being one of the first, on one hand, we had some, I wouldn't say anxiety, but at the beginning we thought, "Oh, that's going to take years until they approve our non-GM edited banana." But surprisingly, I can tell you that the average time, from the initial interaction to the approvals, the regulatory approval is between two to six months. And what helps, right? It's fast.

Adrian:

That is very fast. Right.

Eyal Maori:

That is very fast. So if you compare it to transgenic crops, right, that can take 15, 20 years. What helps is, first of all, I have to acknowledge our fantastic regulatory team at Tropic, and it is a lot build on trust, solid scientific data. So we provide them a lot of data to show that indeed they're non-transgenic editors, the performance, and we keep the dialogue open. And once one process is established, we see that other countries just look and borrow and adopt and continue.

Adrian:

What's next for Tropic Biosciences? I mean, are there other crops, other markets that you are particularly focused on that you can share with us?

Eyal Maori:

If you ask me what is in a way our major achievement, and then how can we follow up on that? At least for banana, we have unlocked the genetic sterility of banana. So banana has been locked for decades and decades, right from the '50s since the Gros Michel banana was wiped out because of the Panama disease. We are enjoying the Cavendish, but it's a clone and no breeding is possible. And now Tropic was able to introduce genetic innovation and generate for the first time ever a new banana, Cavendish banana variety. So we were able to do that. So next for us, and it's a little bit ambitious, but that's why we are here today. I hope for us that we can convert banana to be like corn. And what do I mean by that? From an orphan crop, we now can take the banana and tuck traits using gene editing. So right now our varieties are spread and they're standalone. And the next thing for Tropic would be to use pyramid strategy and stack them together so farmers enjoy all of them in one or two varieties.

Adrian:

Thank you so much for providing such a fascinating insight into what you are doing, but also of course, what Tropic Biosciences is doing. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

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