Genetic modification allows plant growth even in adverse situations
A plant growth accelerator that promotes plant growth even in adverse conditions is the company's bet from Goiás NovAg Agrícola LTDA in its partnership with Unicamp. Founded in 2018, NovAg is a company focused on launching new products through the transfer of technologies developed in universities and research institutes. According to its founding partner Giovani Saccardo Clemente, the company's mission is to capture new technologies produced in academia and, through licensing these technologies, transform them into products that solve problems. “In academia, there is a lot of knowledge generated. We seek to insert this knowledge into our products and sell it to those who need these solutions”, explains Giovani.
One of these solutions is precisely the technology that describes a way of accelerating plant growth in transgenic plants, developed in Unicamp Biology Institute (IB Unicamp) by the team led by the professor Marcelo Menossi. The patent was filed by the team at Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency, which also handled licensing, formalizing the transfer of technology to NovAg in 2020, focusing on its application to increase results in soybean cultivation.
Regarding the development of the technology, Menossi explains that the acceleration of plant growth is achieved through a mechanism of silencing the gene that encodes the DELLA protein. The DELLA protein, in turn, is found in a large number of plants and plays an important role in controlling their growth in situations where the plant is subjected to stress. “This protein works as a brake on plant growth. When the plant is subjected to some type of stress, which can be caused by environmental factors such as drought, it tries to stop its growth, producing too much of this protein” explains Menossi.
With this in mind, the researchers wondered whether a genetic modification in the plant, so that it produced less of the DELLA protein, would allow it to maintain its growth even under adverse situations. "That is what happened!" celebrates Menossi, pointing out that, by silencing the gene responsible for the DELLA protein, the plant starts to develop much faster.
The study was conducted at Unicamp with a focus on the cultivation of sugar cane, but the professor explains that, with soy – which is the object of licensing for NovAg – perhaps the results will be even better. “It is possible that the plant presents the same productivity, but in a shorter period of time, or it is possible that, in addition to developing faster, it is also more productive and provides more seeds” emphasizes Menossi.
According to the professor, the technology also has the potential to be used in crops intended for the production of biomass for bioenergy, such as corn, sorghum and so-called energy sugarcane (a quality of sugarcane with a lower sugar content, widely used in the production of biomass). .
Read article in full published on the Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
