Climate & Sustainable Agriculture

Programs

Climate and Sustainable Agriculture

Our surging population size and changing climate severely threaten future food security.

With the ability to modify plant genomes easily and precisely with CRISPR genome editing, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make agriculture more sustainable. Agriculture can be an active part of the solution to climate change, not a part of the problem. The IGI is developing crops that are resistant to pests, diseases, and a changing climate, and less dependent on chemical fertilizers. We partner with stakeholders around the world to ensure that new crop varieties will be broadly available and benefit those who depend on them.

Key Goals

Engineer the crops of the future: climate change-resistant, sustainable, and nutritious

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and increase carbon sequestration in farm soils

Explore the genetic basis of disease resistance and generate plants that are immune to infection

Develop new methods of efficiently delivering CRISPR components to crops, including strategies that do not result in the insertion of foreign DNA

Plant Genomics & Transformation Facility

Located in the Innovative Genomics Institute Building at UC Berkeley, the Plant Genomics and Transformation Facility (PGTF) has established transformation and genome editing protocols for a selection of major crop species.

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