We’re excited to announce a new research partnership with KU Leuven to advance disease resistance in banana and cassava! 🍌
We’re working with the Tropical Crop Improvement laboratory, led by Prof. Herve Vanderschuren, and the Experimental Plant Systems Biology laboratory, led by Prof. Devang Mehta, to explore new approaches to improving disease resistance in these important crops.
Banana and cassava are vital to food security and provide income for millions of smallholder farmers across Africa and the Global South. Both crops can tolerate challenging growing conditions, but diseases remain a major threat to production.
The collaboration will combine KU Leuven’s expertise in genetic technologies, sequencing, and protein interactions with our FloraFold® AI platform and high-throughput in-planta screening technology.
Together, we aim to identify plant immune receptors and design precise genetic changes that restore their ability to recognise pathogens, accelerating the development of more durable disease resistance.
Initial research will target several major diseases, such as Fusarium wilt (including Tropical Race 4), Xanthomonas wilt, black Sigatoka, and banana bunchy top virus, as well as cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak disease.
🤝 We’re looking forward to working with the KU Leuven teams to apply our technology to crops that are so important to farmers and communities around the world.
New research partnership with KU Leuven
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