Kevin Folta (00:00.476)
About five seconds of dead air here. I got a little bit of a background noise that I can screen out if I have a sample. So just hold quiet for a second.
Kevin Folta (00:14.072)
Sounds like a jet engine down the street. Okay, here we go.
Kevin Folta (00:22.5)
Hi everybody and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now today we're looking at cassava. It's a hardy root crop that provides dietary lifeline for over a billion people across to grow. yeah.
Nigel Taylor (00:34.168)
So Kevin, I'm really sorry. It's breaking up at my end. I can hardly hear you. Yeah.
giles oldroyd (00:37.455)
Yeah, it's breaking up for me as well. We can't hear you.
Kevin Folta (00:39.32)
Really? Huh. All right, how about well let me just try that that's very strange that it's breaking up.
giles oldroyd (00:44.145)
It's fine now. It's strange when you just went into your... It was all breaking up.
Kevin Folta (00:50.284)
Okay. Well what what might happen and it may sh I should have said this before is just keep rolling because the way the software works is it'll record each of us locally and upload. So the final version, even though it may come across as limited bandwidth, it's actually going up to the cloud in its entirety. So as you're going, just keep on going. If you're s seeing something glitchy happening, just keep on rolling and then I can glue it all together. Okay, let's try it again from the beginning.
And I'll try to have my enunciation better. That was weird. Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now, today we're looking at cassava. It's a hardy root crop that provides a dietary lifeline for over a billion people around the globe, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, while cassava is a pretty durable crop in some ways, it grows in lousy soil, it does okay in drought, it faces naff just massive production challenges.
Farmers fields are plagued by a number of different viruses. It offers a very low nutrition, nutritionally dense product, and it deteriorates rapidly after harvest. But today we're exploring how genetic improvements are stepping in to tackle these challenges, to improve nutrition and build in that durable disease resistance so it can feed the food and secure. There's also really important issues of the social and political resistance that really a much maligned technology is receiving.
And we'll touch on that too. So today we're speaking with Dr. G Giles Oldroyd, he's the president of the Donald Danforth Center, and Dr. Nigel Taylor, he's the Vice President of Impact and Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator, and also the guest on episode twenty-two on the podcast eleven years and five hundred episodes ago. So welcome to the podcast, Giles and Nile Nigel.
giles oldroyd (02:39.952)
Thank you, Kevin.
Nigel Taylor (02:41.422)
Thank you.
Kevin Folta (02:42.243)
Yeah, nice to talk to you again. This is really great because it's always wonderful to check in with a project that we talked about before. And before we get too much into that, let's first start by talking about the Danforth Center. And I just wanted to touch on this first because it's a really special hive of scientists that most people don't know about. So can you tell me a little bit about the Danforth Center and how this connection and proximity to academic research, ag star ag tech startups, and other translational nonprofit ventures
really accelerates the timeline between lab discovery and actually moving products to the field.
giles oldroyd (03:17.774)
Yeah. So the Damfall Center, being, about to celebrate our 28 years since we were founded. We are a mission driven organization. Our mission is to improve the human condition through plant science. And we have three pillars of activity in there, solving food security, increasing sustainability in agriculture, and driving economic development through innovation. So the center, although, you know, we do have a...
context of a traditional academic environment where we have research faculty undertaking research and doing publications, we also take very seriously that point on taking a discovery through to its application all the way to outcomes driving change in the real world. And we see that in multiple ways, so from a very philanthropic context when we're addressing food security and
trying to improve the livelihoods of some of the poorest people on the planet. There we're taking an entirely philanthropic view with regards to how we deliver valuable trades and solutions to farmers. Here in St. Louis, we are also looking at the economic development of our region and the private sector, developing the private sector as well. But increasingly, you know, that's a key issue. Of course, also in countries like Sub-Saharan Africa, you want to be driving up their economy, building
their agricultural economy while we're also addressing food security. you know, really it's a across the board attempt to really solve some of these really challenging problems that we face on the planet. How do we sustainably feed a population of 10 to 12 billion, which is where we're heading and how do we do it in a more equitable manner than where we currently stand?
Kevin Folta (05:09.134)
Very good. And let let's start at the beginning about cassava. I think people don't know what this is, despite the fact that it's a significant world food staple. So could you tell me more about cassava, what it is and its significance to populations throughout the world?
Nigel Taylor (05:26.518)
Yes, sure. Cassava is a little unusual in that it is truly a tropical crop. And this is one of the reasons why here in in North America and in Europe, we're not familiar with cassava, although we do eat it as tapioca on occasions. So cassava, anything below about 10 degrees centigrade and cassava starts to get really unhappy and die. So it's it's grown only in the tropics. Originally, originates
originates in the Amazonian region, but is now spread across all the tropical regions. it's the third most important source of dietary calories in the tropics. Only rice and maize are more important for feeding people and cultivated in about 100 countries. And as you said, by between 800 and a billion, 800 million a billion people.
every day. it's really extremely important there. About 25 million hectares grown around the world now, but 80 % of that is in Africa. And in fact, and I've seen this as you drive along, say in Western Kenya and other parts of Eastern Central Africa, there's 10 times more cassava grown than all the cereals put together. So depending where you are,
Like here in the Midwest, if you drive along the road, you're seeing corn, corn, maize, maize, corn. There in many places is cassava, cassava, cassava. So it's extremely important. It's very important for smallholder farmers because of its resilience to drought, to excessive heat, which is something that we're seeing more and more, unpredictable rain, for example, and poorer soils.
giles oldroyd (06:51.472)
you
Nigel Taylor (07:18.37)
So one of the catch words always is, while other crops fail, there will always be cassava in the ground. And I think I should have said a little bit earlier on the cassava is a root crop. So it captures the energy in its leaves and then pumps that down into its root system and it makes these really large starchy roots. And that's what is harvested by the farmers. It can stay in the ground until the farmer needs it and they harvest at that time.
giles oldroyd (07:39.28)
you
Kevin Folta (07:47.076)
Yeah, I think we can kind of picture what this is. It's just a large but it is actually a root, right? It's not a tuber. It's a actual root itself that's storing the carbohydrate.
Nigel Taylor (07:56.994)
That's correct. That's correct. That makes it actually unique amongst all the major crops. It's a genuine root. Unlike potato, of course, which is a shoot structure under the ground, cassava is a storage root.
Kevin Folta (08:12.046)
Good. And and you r you mentioned that you know this is a pretty durable crop in terms of heat and drought and things like that, but there's a number of threats that do certainly affect it. And so what are the major threats to cassava and how do they impact food security in the developing world?
Nigel Taylor (08:28.214)
Yeah, so the major constraints in Africa where we work most are the two virus diseases, Casablanca Mosaic Disease and Casablanca Brown Streak Disease. Casablanca Mosaic Disease is a DNA virus, Casablanca Brown Streak Disease is an RNA virus. And they're both transmitted by whiteflies and by farmers who take stem cuttings.
to use cassava as a vegetative repropagated. So when they take the cuttings and they plant for the next cropping cycle, they are also transmitting the disease from one cropping cycle to the other. And combined over time, this has a severe impact on the yields of cassava. It's estimated about a billion dollars a year is lost to those two diseases in sub-Saharan Africa put together.
And in Mejori County, for example, in southern Kenya, about 25 % of the crop is lost to Kisabba brown streak disease. And this translates into about $1,200 per hectare per year that smallholder farmers are losing because of brown streak disease. So that's a huge impact on your income. If you're living on a few dollars a day and you're losing that amount of potential, both as food
And of course, you would be selling any excess that you could. So it's an economic impact and a food security threat. So those are the two major diseases. There are other components as well. The whiteflies, as I said, which transmit these diseases, but also stress the plants as well. There are, due to climate change, there have been huge increases in the whitefly population, what's called superabundance whiteflies.
in certain regions and these suppress the yields on their own and then spread the cassava brown streak disease and the cassava mosaic disease.
Kevin Folta (10:32.162)
So ha have there been efforts in vector control? I know seem to remember something about
Nigel Taylor (10:38.612)
It's not practical for smallholder farmers to be using chemicals, for example, which is what we would be doing in the US or in cotton crops, for example, in the Indian subcontinent, you would be spraying to protect, but this is not a viable way for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to control. They can't access the chemicals, it's too expensive, it's just not going to happen.
You have to incorporate the resistance to the disease into the genetics.
Kevin Folta (11:12.356)
Perfect. So let's talk about the genetics and the mechanisms that have been used to f fortify the virus resistance in cassava. So could you walk us through that molecular biology and what specific molecular strategies you've used to stack durable resistance against the vi different viruses?
Nigel Taylor (11:31.758)
So yes, we've used a combination of biotechnology and conventional breeding, which I think is really important, very important part of the story of the success we've had. The RNAi technology is also called pathogen-derived resistance. And this is what we did here in the labs in collaboration with our partners in Kenya and Uganda. And we took a piece of the viral.
the cassava branched-week disease, there's two species of virus that cause that. And we isolated the core protein sequence, the DNA, the core protein sequence, and we generated a gene construct which we integrated into the plants, the cassava genome. And then by doing that, what that does is the plant will transcribe that and it triggers the gene silencing mechanisms, the inherent gene.
silencing mechanisms in the plant. We're just triggering what's naturally already there in the plant by introducing very small sequences of the virus into the plant genome. That triggers the defense mechanisms and really teaches the plant to recognize the virus before it arrives. So conceptually, a little bit like immunization, you're teaching the organism to recognize the pathogen before it arrives.
the plant is pre-armed, recognizes the virus when it's introduced by the white fly, immediately can then target it, chop it up before it can establish disease.
Kevin Folta (13:12.206)
Very good. So it seems to really it really parallels the success the strategies that have been used in crops like papaya now for thirty years, right? This is this is a w a well established mechanism for control that seems to be really durable.
Nigel Taylor (13:26.626)
Yes, exactly. It is in papaya and it's also been demonstrated in other crops. What we did that was novel was to take it and put it into cassava, which had never been done before. yep, we've now tested it. We have performed more than 40 field trials in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. And this technology works really, really well. It surpasses our expectations.
Kevin Folta (13:55.281)
It's it's really exciting. And I know we we talked about this eleven years ago on October twenty-fourth, twenty fifteen, if anyone wants to go back in the archive. But but with that said, you know, how much has progressed in terms of field trials and safety evaluations and other performance assessments to really test its fitness for the field?
Nigel Taylor (14:15.736)
Well, as I said, we performed over 40 field trials now. And also what I should say was in order to combine the two, we had resistance to Kusaba-Brown Streak disease from our biotechnology approach. We then introduced that into breeding programs with our partners in Kenya and Uganda. And these went through breeding programs over a period of, we were just probably starting that in 2015.
We did that through 2016 and onwards. And we now have 16 varieties of the biotech cassava, which we call Kinga Koo cassava, which, as I said, now have proved high-level efficacy in the fields.
Kevin Folta (15:05.466)
Yeah, I was working with some of the regulatory issues in Uganda back in twenty seventeen. And there was a lot of did it didn't even have a biosafety program in place to be able to begin to assess the the crops that were being introduced and they had the Matoke and other things that were developed there, actually in Uganda for Ugandans. And and they didn't even have that ball rolling. So what are the biggest regulatory and biosafety hurdles that you've really
seen and had to overcome in partnership with these different pl different countries and their regulatory organizations.
Nigel Taylor (15:41.176)
Well, from the biosafety point of view, we had very few hurdles, and that was intentional. We designed the technology from the very beginning to have very, very few biosafety hurdles and to have what we would call a low regulatory load. So the RNAi technology, for example, does not express a protein. So we don't need to worry about allergenicity.
things like that, didn't need to do any of those tests. That saved us a huge amount of effort on the regulatory side. Kisaba is not a weedy crop. It is, as I said earlier, its origin is in Amazonia. It has no relatives and does not cross or outcross to any other plant or any other species in Africa. So it's not going to spread in that manner. So we took care of all these things very early.
So biosafety-wise low hurdles. On the regulatory side, that's obviously been challenging. The reason for that was that has not been done before. So we were developing a new path. The regulators in Kenya and Uganda, where we were working with originally, had not done this before. It was a case of engaging with them.
We were all learning as we went along, but we had, of course, very, very experienced regulatory experts here at the Damforce Centre who drove that.
Kevin Folta (17:17.432)
And th one of the other big hurdles from my perspective that I would anticipate is that these innovations are extremely expensive. And whereas commercial biotech you can rely on seed sales to recoup millions of dollars from RD. But how does an independent research institute like the Danforth Center really shepherd a new crop forward that here in the West, you know, we don't really even know about? With a two-decade timeline of development and without a commercial incentive, where does the funding come from to sustain a project like that?
giles oldroyd (17:48.441)
Yes, so I mean think that goes to the core of why a centre like the Damfor Centre exists because these are huge important challenges which impact hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis and if we leave it to the private sector we would not see these solutions coming through.
It requires, as you say, very significant investment, decades of research, hard work here in St. Louis, but also a lot of work also in Kenya, in Uganda, in Rwanda, and that all costs money. Our model, at least in the food security space, is that we look to research granting agencies.
Whether that be the federal government or in this case a lot of funding came from the Gates Foundation. But we also have our own philanthropic giving our own donor community who support us in this work. we are looking to essentially the charitable sector and the philanthropic community to support this work because of the significance of its impact. Now, you know, as we move forwards and as we develop and get much greater food security in African countries,
it's important that we also are developing that private sector. You actually want seed companies, we want seed companies in Kenya and Uganda who have the capability to deliver these new variant cassavas to the farmers who need it most. And we were actually working also to try to develop the seed systems, which is about developing the private sector in those host countries, because it's not just about ensuring you've got food security for the people, it's actually ensuring that you're driving
economic development in these regions that we needed.
Kevin Folta (19:38.213)
The economic development is is a big part of it. If you can have individual propagators who are able to do this, then that does have a nice financial incentive to it. But what about the scientific incentive where Dr. Taylor mentioned that these are propagated by clonal propagules? And so what kind of safeguards have to be in place that's that ensure that smallholder farmers are not spreading any more viruses, that you're getting certified disease free material?
Nigel Taylor (20:08.77)
Yeah, that's part of the formal seed systems that we're building. I think this is something that's becoming, people have realized it's more more important. The biotech knowledge approaches, we can address many issues. And as we've shown with Cassava, we can generate really, really excellent germplasm and varieties for delivery to farmers. But how do you deliver and how do you deliver at scale?
giles oldroyd (20:21.136)
you
Nigel Taylor (20:37.302)
with cassava, we're talking millions and millions of these cuttings. And as you were saying, we need to certify that these are clean. So that's what a formal seed system is composed of, is composed of a rapid propagation component of what we call the early generation seed system. Then there is a certification that these are being clean.
And this is done by the government organizations in Kenya. This will be done by Kepes, for example. And they're experienced in this. They come and they visit the seed farms where the seed has been propagated and they will certify them clean. They're not clean, they'll be rejected and they can't go through the seed system further. are then, seeds, when I say seeds, are little cuttings in cassava.
are then taken to the local level and village level where there are seed merchants who will propagate them further. And they also have to have their field certified as clean before it's distributed or sold to the farmers. So this is the certification and the clean seed component is built into a formal seed system. And this is what's so important about it that we do that. We know that we're delivering quality to the farmer.
Kevin Folta (21:54.937)
Very good. So we're speaking with Dr. Giles Oldroyd and Dr. Nigel Taylor of the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and we're covering what's happening in disease-tolerant or disease-resistant cassava. This is intended for propagation in sub-Saharan Africa. So this is the Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll be back in just a moment. And then we take a little break here. Doing okay so far? Sounds good? Yeah, yeah. Really?
giles oldroyd (22:19.856)
Yeah, great. I mean you are breaking up quite a bit Kevin sometimes sometimes you're fine sometimes we can't we Hardly hear you but but you what we have your No, now you're totally fine and then But we have your script so it's okay
Kevin Folta (22:24.792)
Yeah.
That's very surprising. Yeah, the script. Yeah. All right. That's really s you know, that's interesting 'cause I've never had the problem when I do this from work. When I do it from home. I live out in the country. I live in the middle of nowhere. And there my internet is, you know, a bird lands on the wire and it's you know. All right. But I'll but hang with us here and we'll this'll come through fine in the end here. I I'm ninety nine percent uploaded, so it should be Yes.
Nigel Taylor (22:30.498)
You're good now.
giles oldroyd (22:43.673)
Hmm
Nigel Taylor (22:55.342)
Kevin.
Nigel Taylor (22:59.08)
Could I make a, and I think I missed it when I talked about that is, you asked about the regulatory overcoming the regulator hurdles. I would like to say what we have achieved on the regulatory approvals in Kenya and Rwanda. then I will pro I mean, you can tell me you mentioned Uganda, but we are not able to progress in Uganda because they never passed the laws to put the regulatory system in place. So
Kevin Folta (23:10.138)
Cool.
Kevin Folta (23:22.456)
He never did it. Damn.
Nigel Taylor (23:27.478)
I can comment on that as well if you wish.
Kevin Folta (23:29.934)
Yeah, that's good. I'll I'll I'll we'll start with that. I I was there I think it was let's see, the probably
probably eight years ago this week and I was talking to the it was the Minister of Science and Agri Science and Medicine and he was going to go in front of Parliament and talk about these things and he didn't know about transgenic crops. So I was coaching him up. And and that was it worked out really, really well 'cause they got it approved through Parliament two weeks later. But then it got vetoed by the president apparently so that was the heartbreaker. But well all right so we'll d
Nigel Taylor (24:03.618)
Yeah, that's true.
giles oldroyd (24:06.98)
And I also just.
Kevin Folta (24:07.66)
back and and we can ask about, you know, what does the current regulatory climate look like in in the Lakes region or in that area of Africa with respect to where there are systems even in place to be able to start regulatory processes. Is that good?
So we'll start with that.
giles oldroyd (24:26.552)
Yeah, it would be good to get a point. I don't know if I have the space in your questions or Nigel, you can make this point. know, virus was this, this technology of using the, the, the RNAi to, to silence viruses. has been available in papaya for nearly, is it 20 years since they released the papaya? Is it 30 years in Hawaii? And you know, in part that's because everything was aligned.
Kevin Folta (24:45.092)
Yeah, thirty. Yeah. Thirty years, yeah it'll be
giles oldroyd (24:53.174)
And the policy environment was aligned, the grower community was there, the consumers were accepting. There was a huge problem in Hawaii that if they didn't deal with it, the whole papaya industry was gone. But it was perfect alignment of all of those processes. Everything was lined up. That meant it went out fast and it's been delivering for 30 years now, right? I guess papaya ringspot is gone and still in Hawaii. I guess it's never, has it ever reoccurred? Do we know?
I guess not.
Kevin Folta (25:24.73)
Yeah, I I yeah.
Nigel Taylor (25:24.76)
My understanding is that people have started growing conventional material again because the disease pressure goes down so much over time if there's nothing there for it to, so you can actually, yeah, you have an epidemiological effect. But then Hawaii is special because it is isolated and there's nothing else coming in and out.
giles oldroyd (25:30.448)
giles oldroyd (25:35.394)
Interesting.
Kevin Folta (25:43.544)
That's right.
giles oldroyd (25:43.865)
Sure. Yeah, sure. However, I think it's a useful point to make that, you know, that when everything's aligned, it can go fast. When you're having to build from the big from scratch and you know, you have to put all the policy and everything's going in place. It's a much harder, it's a much harder ball.
Kevin Folta (25:46.266)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (26:04.344)
Well, the the other side of the coin is you had a papaya, which is relatively under the radar in terms of a crop, but then you also didn't have the excessive communication through the internet in nineteen ninety six through ninety eight as this approval process was ha taking place. And so you hadn't yet mobilized the the anti genetic engineering folks outside of a couple of folks who were active back then.
giles oldroyd (26:18.106)
Well, that's true as well, yeah.
giles oldroyd (26:27.566)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Folta (26:28.996)
But in and and and they're gone now, those folks are but so in in general they I mean that was even before the sun drop potatoes or whatever that sundew potatoes. So but we'll dive back in with we'll start out with that regulatory climate question and and maybe I'll even mention why is it so why was it so easy back then for Papaya or something like that. We'll we'll we'll see how it sounds. All right, so here we go.
giles oldroyd (26:54.51)
Hmm. Hmm.
Nigel Taylor (26:55.63)
Could do Kevin. You know, the other point would be, it's been doing this for 18 years. We started, well, 2008, yep, 2008 on this. 18 years is a really long time. And we're still, we're getting close, but we haven't deployed yet. Takes a long time and I can comment on that if you wish. And then also that's Kenya. But in Rwanda, kind of to the Giles point, it's gone so much quicker because of
giles oldroyd (27:21.136)
Hmm.
Nigel Taylor (27:26.232)
the information we have in place and an enabling policy environment.
Kevin Folta (27:31.618)
Excellent. Let's talk let's start out talking about that. We'll we'll go from there. That sounds good. Here we go. Let me make sure I find my starting point here.
Nigel Taylor (27:43.822)
Feel free to talk on the papaya piece, Giles, whenever it comes up.
giles oldroyd (27:46.456)
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Folta (27:47.618)
Yeah, let's we'll start out kinda with let me f I'm trying to figure out where I where I dropped off here. Okay, here we go.
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Giles Oldword, the president of the Donald Danforth Center, and Dr. Nigel Taylor, who is the Vice President of Impact and the Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator at Danforth Center. And before the break, we were talking about the innovations that are happening in Cassava, but all of this has to happen on some sort of a regulatory backdrop if we're going to have these things moving from the innovation to the application. And can you give me an idea of where this stands?
now in Africa, how you know, how how is Uganda different from Kenya, different from Rwanda? And what do you think is really underlying the differences that we see in that regulatory climate?
Kevin Folta (28:45.809)
Oops, did I drop out there? Okay. Okay. I so I I let me try it one more time. That's really strange. I'd never have had a problem with this before. So maybe I let me try this. Make sure everything's plugged in.
Nigel Taylor (28:47.212)
Yep, yeah you did at the end.
giles oldroyd (29:02.338)
You're going to answer this question, right, Nigel?
Kevin Folta (29:02.979)
Okay. Alright, here go. Does that sound okay? Are we doing alright? Let me go back to okay. Alright, here we go.
Nigel Taylor (29:07.636)
Yes, yes, I'll take this Charles. it comes to the,
Kevin Folta (29:14.118)
So
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Giles Olroyd and Dr. Niles Taylor from the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and we're talking about cassava, mostly innovations in virus resistance that will make the crop more durable and allow it to serve more people in sub-Saharan Africa. And before the break, we talked about the virus resistance mechanisms and some ways this would work. But to have the the crop in your hand and have different varieties ready to go, but you have
to surpass this regulatory climate and so can you explain what's happening right now in places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya in terms of their individual regulatory networks and how they're different. Maybe you know how is it going in one place versus another?
Nigel Taylor (30:05.09)
Yes, it's kind of a different story depending on which country we've been working in. And as you say, we've been engaged with the Kinga Kua virus resistant cassava in Kenya since about 2008. We started the work, so it's been 18 years now. On the regulatory side, we've made significant process. We submitted an application to the National Biosafety Authority.
in 2020 and Kinga Kuu Kusaba is approved as safe for food feed in the environment, approved by the National Biosafety Authority in Kenya. We've moved through there in Kenya. You also have to have approvals from the National Environmental Management Agency, NEMA, in Kenya. They have a relatively complex regulatory framework in Kenya. So we've been working our way through all of these steps, approvals at each stage.
giles oldroyd (30:53.808)
you
Nigel Taylor (31:03.754)
and also national performance trials. So we had to perform national performance trials in Kenya and seven different locations over two years. A lot of work in order for us to be able to register these as varieties and release to farmers. So in Kenya right now, that's where we are. We're waiting for variety registration of our eight Kinga Kuu varieties. And at the moment though, we are
We were paused, unfortunately, and we're waiting for a ruling from the Kenyan Court of Appeals there. In that case, we're waiting on that ruling. We were expecting an April. As soon as we get that ruling, we can move forward, get variety of registration, and deliver to the farmers. The process in Rwanda has been dramatically different and so much quicker.
The reason for that is a strong enabling policy environment from leadership in Rwanda who recognize the value of not just virus resistant cassava, but insect resistant maize, late blight resistant potato, and they want these crops to enable their farmers. So in Rwanda, we were able to build what's called data transferability, all the work that we done in Kenya.
we were able to transfer almost all of the biosafety data into an application in Rwanda. And therefore we've gone very much faster in Rwanda. Starting in 2019, we also have approval for Kingukku in Rwanda. We finished national performance trials and we're waiting for, same, we're waiting for variety registration. Unfortunately in Uganda, where we were working and one of our very strong partners, we've not been able to progress.
giles oldroyd (32:56.272)
you
Nigel Taylor (32:58.248)
And the reason being that Uganda have not been able to pass into law the necessary regulatory framework and regulatory requirements needed to approve a crop and deliver to farmers. So we have different stories of slow steady progress over a long time, very quick progress when we have an enabling environment and in other places where hoping Uganda will come.
back on and be able to deploy, but at the moment we're waiting there.
Kevin Folta (33:30.373)
Yeah, I always found it very contrasting that the excitement of scientists in the African continent for this new technology who are saying me too, me too. And you know, Joe Giles, you were just at the African Food Systems Forum recently and w how did you perceive the current interest in modern biotech when you look at African farmers or scientists or even the public and policy makers? You know, what's the temperature over there to accept this kind of technology?
giles oldroyd (33:57.265)
Well, I would say the broader environment is a recognition that there needs to be a massive increase in the productivity of African crops, not just to underpin
food security, but also to drive the economic development of those regions. These are critical crops. So cassava, you can process it into starch, and then you can be exporting starch, which is a very valuable product. This is something that Thailand does extensively, but in Africa, actually, Brown Street, particularly in East Africa, Brown Street disease limits the capability to get that investment into the industry in order to be processing. So I saw in the Africa food system,
forum a real desire and recognition of the importance of raising agricultural production overall as a driver for the economic development of the region. And there's also a recognition that in order to achieve that you really need to embrace some of these new technologies and facilitate their release in order to advance the crops that you're targeting. And picking up on what Nigel said, you know, it's really it's where you get that alignment.
of all of the factors where you've got the traits available to tackle some of the problems in those target crops. You've got the regulatory environment already established. You've got leadership that are supporting the advancement of those traits, as well as the pull, the private sector pull, the farmer pull desiring those traits and wanting to see the increased production from, and reliable increased production from those
crops. That is not the case in all African countries, far from it. But in certain places, most especially what we're seeing in Rwanda, a real alignment of all of those factors coming together that's just allowing the advancement of a lot of new trades coming into getting to the farmers, getting to the farmers that need it most, but also recognizing that once you raise that productivity for the farmers, and most especially when you raise the reliability of productivity, you encourage investment, private sector
giles oldroyd (36:11.09)
investment into both, for instance, the seed systems because you're bringing value to those crops, but also into the processing end, how you process those crops, not just necessarily food crops, they can also be high-value crops in their own right, driving investment into country and then bringing export value to those countries and driving up the development of those countries. A lot of economic development starts with agriculture. It's the agricultural body that
growth in agricultural productivity that really can drive the initial development of a country and certainly African governments are recognizing that and some of those governments are pushing hard to create the whole environment alignment of all of these aspects in order to recognize that growth in the agriculture, the agricultural base driving economic development for the farmers but also for the country as a whole.
Kevin Folta (37:09.061)
Well, one of the funny parts about driving economic development and doing good things in agriculture, look at the Green Revolution, it's got its critics, right? They say that well you know, when you start to intensify
agriculture even in the interest of food security that you have this big issue of now intense you intensification of use of fertilizers and other types of inputs. So how do you balance that? How do you balance the need for yields and for nutritious food against the environmental impacts of farming and the intensification of input use
giles oldroyd (37:40.305)
I mean that is a really interesting challenge. think that when we look at the Green Revolution, it's created what I think is a false perspective that there is a conflict between agricultural development and the environment. That's just because that's how we designed the system historically. I actually think now, especially with the advancements of gene editing, we can move fast in redesigning the agricultural system.
systems. And when you look out in nature, there are solutions for all of the problems that we face in agriculture, including the delivery of nutrients to crops, which is a key foundation of the Green Revolution. We currently hear it here in the US, but also in Europe. We're reliant on chemical fixation or mining of these nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus. And then we apply them at high concentrations to our fields and we lose a lot of those chemicals out into the environment with significant consequences too.
environmental health and human health. We are not trapped in that system. There are solutions. Nature has solutions. There are bacteria that feed plants with the nitrogen. There are fungi that feed plants with the phosphate. We have not used these natural solutions very extensively in our agriculture. We're currently limited in the use of these. But we here at the Damfor Centre believe we can transform that agricultural system to one that
much more sustainable and technologies like gene editing is really going to fast pace that capability. So I hope that as we advance agricultural development in places like Africa, you can bypass
some of these quite polluting, environmentally polluting solutions that we currently rely on. In Africa, we saw a transformation in telephone technology. And it wasn't because they put all the investment in the landlines. It's because they just went straight to cell phones. And that transformed the landscape. I think that we can do something similar in agriculture. We don't have to go back, sort of follow the same trajectory of agricultural development that we did back in the 1960s.
giles oldroyd (39:56.245)
advance both sustainable and secure food production in a radically new way and that's I find that very exciting from the African landscape of that possibility. Having said that we also have to be cognizant that we in the high-income countries are relying on chemical additions to drive out our own food production and we don't want to be Mary Antoinette and say African farmers, smallholder farmers in Africa shouldn't have access to these inputs. They have as much right to get access to these
inputs and as we drive up economic development they will be able to afford some of those inputs. Food security really is important and if it comes, if we have to put agricultural inputs in to drive up that food security I think we have to accept that because that's exactly what we're doing here in America or in Europe. That underpins our own food security. Having said that, if we can bypass that and drive a much more sustainable agricultural development I think that that is the ultimate moonshot that I think we're also
we're striving to achieve here at the Damforth Centre, aligning sustainability and agriculture alongside food security, both transforming how we do agriculture in high income countries like America or Europe, but also really transforming both the sustainability and security of food production in Africa.
Kevin Folta (41:17.401)
No, very good. But you know, the other side of that coin too is it that should be part of the moonshot is the consumer. Because look what we've done here for years is so many breeding programs, they they they made the fruits bigger, they made farmers happy, they made the the breeders came up with new products for industry, but maybe they fell a little short of consumer expectation in terms of flavor aroma, that kind of thing. So how much work is actually going into the consumer end?
giles oldroyd (41:37.936)
Hmm?
Kevin Folta (41:44.853)
in in you know, Africa isn't just one monolith. I mean you have different tastes and different preferences and different parts. So how much does the consumer play a role in shaping cultivar develop?
giles oldroyd (41:54.289)
I asked a really important question. mean, we were ultimately it is a consumer who's who's who's buying these these products. And so it's very important that you keep that in mind. Food is really important to people is not just
It's not just calories, it's part of our culture and across the board we have strong cultural and family connections around food and around the family meal. We believe here at the Damfor Center we have to be hugely respectful of that and alongside to the point on the cassava, as Nigel said, we've actually got it. We've been breeding the virus resistant technologies into farmer preferred varieties in countries.
to cassava varieties that are preferred in Kenya, cassava varieties that are preferred in Uganda, and cassava varieties that are preferred in Rwanda. And those preferred varieties are being developed by the governments in those countries through their own breeding programs. Or it's just been selected as these are the varieties that the farmers prefer, and they prefer them in part because they're optimized for those regional countries in their growth habits, but also because
because the people who are consuming them prefer specific aspects of that, the way it tastes, the way you process, the way it cooks, etc. etc. We have to be hugely respectful of that. And so it's not just about releasing a single variety of cassava in this case, or a single variety of cowpea. We haven't done that. We've actually ensured that we've got our technologies into the varieties that the people in those regions prefer.
think you have to be respectful of that and that's really important.
Nigel Taylor (43:45.634)
Yeah, Kevin, I mean, we, with the cassava and our other crops as well, there's a strong farmer participatory component. The farmers come to the fields, they see the crop. We've done that in Kenya and Rwanda, and they actually help us select sometimes. You know, this is the shape of the root that we like. And then we do cooking and organoleptic testing. So for example, we have one of our varieties in Kenya, which takes 40 minutes to
Kevin Folta (43:48.91)
that's great that there's a d go ahead.
Nigel Taylor (44:15.416)
cook to softness compared with 20. So you can see for the smallholder farmer, they're going to want the 20 minute one, not the 40 minute one. But the 40 minute one, we're going to bring in the processors and the starch industrialists and the guys who want to generate biofuel and ethanol. So we may end up with more than one product, in fact several products. But there is a strong farmer and consumer
component to this and it's built in as we develop the products.
Kevin Folta (44:54.034)
that's really great. So you have a diversity of cultivars and a diversity of places that are being trialed and and
hopefully being ultimately deployed. But there's also going to be different tr different challenges to those different regions or different areas as well. And so how is the Damforth Center and your project using the modern tools like Cas9 and other types of site directed nucleases to make specific edits or maybe make other types of changes to even further customize these individual varieties for individual countries or individual farm areas.
Nigel Taylor (45:28.154)
Maybe I will say a little bit about Cassava and then I'll pass it to Giles for a bigger picture. In Cassava, we are just starting a project now where we're using CRISPR-Cas gene editing to look at modifying ribisco capillaries. Because we're aware that as the climate changes, it's going to get hotter, we want to make sure that the cassava crop is going to be resilient to these increasing temperatures.
and we don't lose photosynthetic ability. So that's one area that we're applying this also for disease resistance in Kisawa. But we're also at the Damford Centre applying this now to a range of crops, a range of African crops, which are relevant to smallholder farmers and to big processing.
giles oldroyd (46:19.566)
Yes, so picking up on that, there's a lot of cereals that are native to Africa. So that means they originate from Africa and they've been domesticated in Africa. These are the millets, most especially things like Teff, which is a key product in Ethiopia. But sorghum also is a native cereal to Africa.
and then other millet, finger millet, pearl millet, phonio. These are really important crops because they are naturally climate resilient. They are all crops that are actually already very robust to heat and drought tolerance and they have evolved within the landscape that is natural to Africa. However, the production of those crops is pretty shockingly low. Taffy, looking about one and a half to two tons per hectare.
In finger millets and pearl millets, we're looking at less than one ton per hectare. If you compare that to productivity of corn here in the US, in the US we're achieving, you know, seven, eight, nine, even 10 tons per hectare. And for things like wheat in Europe, you're in the same range, seven, eight, nine tons per hectare. So productivity for basic cereals in Europe and the US is really high and productivity of Africa
domesticated cereals is extremely low. The reason for that is it's principally breeding.
But that is also a biotech contribution, most especially in maize, in raising that productivity. Now I see a huge opportunity here to fast-paced the breeding that we have seen in our high-income cereals into African cereals and to use most especially gene editing to drive that fast-paced for improvement. Because essentially what gene editing is doing is bringing the genetic diversity that's already naturally available within the species
giles oldroyd (48:16.882)
in a very intentional and targeted way. I prefer to call it precision breeding because I think that's what it really is. And I think with precision breeding, we can really advance the improvement of all of our crops, but most especially some of these very unimproved crops that a lot of African farmers are dependent on. What has in America and in Europe has taken us 100 years to get to those massive gains in our cereal productivity. I think we can achieve that in a decade.
now with the new technologies and with precision breeding can rapidly increase the pace of crop improvement. I think the opportunity is immense, it's very exciting and here at the Danforth Centre we're really applying all technologies including breeding into the pipeline to improve crops for both Africa but also for the US.
Kevin Folta (49:14.639)
No, very good. And it's a much faster way to do it too. I mean when you look at the Verca plus Cassava, this is s cassava's span many years. This has gone
two decades at least, right? So what's true about the Danforth Center that really supports this kind of long term translational impact when in other places we'd be checking boxes like journal papers and grant proposals, this kind of thing that really would wouldn't support it. So what what is what's going on at the Danforth Center in in the general culture that makes this kind of thing possible?
giles oldroyd (49:42.545)
I think number one, it's the simplicity of being mission driven.
So, you know, most universities are, would have a mission, but their mission is much, much broader. We have a very explicit mission, which is to improve the human condition through plant science. And that was from our very foundation. That was our mission. There's an intentionality that has come into this, how we structure, how we think at the NAMFOR Center, how we structure the organization and how we structure our partnerships around. are in it for impact. We are here to drive impact. Now we do have to recognize
that for some of our staff members to advance within their research, to advance within their careers, I'm sorry, we need to publish. And publications is important because it's communicating too. It's one way we drive impact is to advance communication. But I think in academia, we put too much emphasis on that particular point of advancing knowledge through publication without necessarily paying a sufficient attention to how you take that knowledge to driving impact. Here at the Danforth Centre, that is core to our existence.
is that we are generating knowledge with the intention of driving real-world impact. And I think just having that as a simplicity in our vision and a mission and in how we function and how our foundation exists, it's just meant that we're very nimble and streamlined towards getting that impact. And that's very different to a traditional university context which actually has a much broader mission than that.
and therefore is structured very differently to how the Damfall Centre is structured.
Kevin Folta (51:26.907)
Well and with that in mind, I you know maybe this is the last question for Dr. Taylor here is you know that this has been a long marathon for you and and that clearly you've invested a lot of your time and and your career into this. And what does this breaking the tape look like? Like where what kind of time frame do you think we're looking at in terms of best case scenario and you know what when do you think this actually may reach the people it's meant to serve?
Nigel Taylor (51:48.91)
I'm sorry, Kevin, I did not. You broke at the critical point. Are you talking cassava or the other crops? Okay.
Kevin Folta (51:57.615)
Yeah. Yeah, cassava, yeah. So so the the the w let me just try that again. I think I I think I know why I'm breaking up now. but you know you've invested a huge amount of time of your career in this and and a lot of a lot of energy and resources over the last two decades. And so what does the end of the marathon look like here? W what kind when do we think that these products will finally meet finally reach the people they were meant to serve?
Nigel Taylor (52:22.158)
We're optimistic that we will be delivering, releasing to farmers in Kenya and or Rwanda next year, 2027. So my vision, our vision, and it's been done with many partners, is to have people eating our products, for making a contribution to their households and to their incomes. I keep coming back to that. It's not just about food security.
It's about generating incomes and better choices for farmers and the farming households. Also, the Kinga Kuka Sava is, what next with that? We don't want to stop there. So we can now, the breeders will be using it to breed into the future for new traits like climate resilience, enhanced climate resilience, enhanced nutrition into the future and to a wider geographical area.
My vision is to have Kinga, Kuwikasaba, you know, being grown and consumed by millions of farming households across sub-Saharan Africa.
Kevin Folta (53:36.443)
Well that's awesome. I hope you come back on the podcast when that happens 'cause it'd be great to celebrate that with you. if people wanted to learn more about the project, listeners wanted to learn more, maybe be donors, where would they look online?
giles oldroyd (53:53.968)
Yeah, I mean, I heard you, Kevin, so I can...
Kevin Folta (53:55.003)
Did I drop out on that one?
giles oldroyd (53:57.522)
So if you want to learn more about the Verka project or more broadly about the Danforth Centre, you can look at us online at danforthcentre.org and we also have accounts, most especially on LinkedIn, and you can follow us at LinkedIn at Danforth Centre. the Verka project is one key aspect of what we do, but we actually contribute to the improvement of a large array of crops.
Kevin Folta (53:59.109)
Wow, d this was really bad. Okay, okay. Yeah, go for it.
giles oldroyd (54:27.695)
driving food security in Africa and broadly sustainability in agriculture across the world.
Kevin Folta (54:42.734)
very good. Well thank you very much for joining me today. thank you good to see you again, Giles and Nigel. and best wishes going forward.
giles oldroyd (54:45.517)
Great, thank you.
Nigel Taylor (54:47.022)
Thank you. Great talking with you.
Kevin Folta (54:56.134)
And and this is a really nice example of how we can watch progress over time. That when we look at a project that's been in development for decades, we can see how it starts and follow it through time. But here we are sitting t sitting ten years or eleven years after the first time we spoke about the project here on the podcast. and that was already a good significant part into a mature project. And now it's finally getting to hit the field, which is really exciting. Well this is the Talking Biotech Podcast, and we'll talk to again next week.
giles oldroyd (55:00.709)
Hmm. Hmm.
giles oldroyd (55:26.161)
I think one thing that we probably didn't touch up, what we didn't touch on, is the challenge of the, one thing that Nigel, he was in field trials in 2011, I think, right Nigel? Your first field trials? In Africa? And, and, so the field trials started 15 years ago, whatever, in that sort of range. And, you know, the Brown Street technology worked.
Kevin Folta (55:26.217)
And that's it. So was there anything else we needed to add to splice back in? I think I think we covered it all.
Nigel Taylor (55:40.244)
Yeah, yeah, what before that actually, but yeah
giles oldroyd (55:51.472)
That was clear, but the problem was that they'd become susceptible to Mosaic virus. And in fact, it was not logical that what the problem, you would assume it was because there was something with the Brown streak resistance that had made the Mosaic virus created the Mosaic virus susceptibility wasn't at all. It was actually because of how the cassava was resistant to Mosaic virus and the process of transformation. It's kind of complicated. It's hard to describe.
I don't know if we want to get there, but for me, it's you know, it's often not a linear path. You're like, okay, here's the solution we have in our head as a scientist, here's the solution, and we're going to just follow from A to B to C to D, and the consumer is gonna get it at the end. It's rarely that clear. know, once you're doing this sort of strategic research.
you get out in the field and you find out something that you didn't anticipate and then you have to go back to the drawing board and solve that problem. And you know, it's been a long journey to get to where we are right now, but Nigel solved the mosaic virus problem.
as well as the, or solve the intrinsic mosaic virus problem that emerged, as well as solving that Brown streak resistance or solving Brown streak susceptibility. it's now, you know, that is part of the reason the journey has been so long is just because, you know, it's rarely a linear path to get there.
giles oldroyd (57:27.761)
Do you want in Idol? I think because I think the one thing where we, know, yes it's true that we, has been a long time, but we don't necessarily have to, it doesn't necessarily have to be that long with all the other new future trades.
Kevin Folta (57:29.016)
Yeah. Well I I mean I could touch on that now if you'd like me to ask. It's you know, there's ways I can phrase that. Let's go for it. I'll and I can I can try
Nigel Taylor (57:43.886)
So are you taking this, Charles? Me?
giles oldroyd (57:46.609)
I can. Do you want me to take it or do you want to take it? It's more your stuff, Nigel.
Kevin Folta (57:47.503)
Yeah, yeah. Let me let me let's go for it. Here we go.
Nigel Taylor (57:52.366)
Okay, so one of the things I'm a little nervous about this is I don't want to leave an impression that when you do genetic modification, you are going to make unpredicted changes.
giles oldroyd (57:59.92)
Yeah, mm-hmm.
giles oldroyd (58:04.945)
Yeah, well, was as I was saying it I was like, yeah, you're just describing that uh-huh
Kevin Folta (58:08.111)
Mm, yeah.
Nigel Taylor (58:08.352)
Yeah, and when we went through our regulatory package, we had to be really careful about this because it said, did you make any unpredicted changes? we, well, Giles is correct. It is a part of the story, an important part. The other important part of it is if we had not come across this problem, we would have made one variety that would have been super resistant to both diseases.
Kevin Folta (58:15.735)
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.
giles oldroyd (58:20.515)
Okay, we can, we maybe as-
Kevin Folta (58:21.498)
Ha ha ha.
Kevin Folta (58:28.121)
Right. Well
Nigel Taylor (58:36.834)
and then tried to force it or make it fit across all of East Africa. Because we had to now go into our breeding program to bring the Brown Street back, sorry, to bring the mosaic disease resistance back in, we now have 16 varieties. And now we can, the penetration in the product we have is so much more impactful or potentially impactful.
giles oldroyd (58:59.473)
Well, mean another outcome or impact from the Cassava program is because Nigel had that problem, we at the Damfor Center started a research program understanding what is the cause of mosaic virus resistance and now we understand what is under Pinsmovase, the mosaic virus resistance in Cassava and it's very different to any other mechanism of disease resistance we know about. It's actually a mutation in DNA polymerase. Is it DNA or RNA polymerase? can't remember. Is it RNA polymerase, Nigel?
Nigel Taylor (59:26.895)
The DNA polymerase, yes.
giles oldroyd (59:29.253)
DNA, thank you, the DNA polymerase, that actually makes the polymerase less effective. And so therefore can't replicate the virus as effectively. And it's kind of surprising, right, that you have a mutation in a polymerase, something as fundamental as a polymerase, and that would expect to carry a disadvantage to the plant. But in this case, it carries an advantage because it blocks the mosaic virus.
Kevin Folta (59:46.083)
I see.
Kevin Folta (01:00:00.747)
I I I think the only way we could really do this in a strategically positive way would be to frame it in were there any surprises along the way that actually enhanced y you the the benefit to the to the farmer and the benefit of the product. Because if if if you if it's framed as a problem or a surprise, then that doesn't look good from a regulatory standpoint. But if it's framed as you know, as we're going we learn more about how other resistances may interact with this and
giles oldroyd (01:00:01.68)
Mmm, there you go.
giles oldroyd (01:00:15.217)
Hmm.
giles oldroyd (01:00:22.961)
Hmm.
Kevin Folta (01:00:30.461)
how how we could build in a more durable resistance by by paying attention to these signals as we go. You know if you frame it like that it's more strategically how the benefit of the of the other virus and what you learn from it rather than making it sound like a surprise or a liability. So if if you can frame it like that I think it's good. But I mean do you want to
giles oldroyd (01:00:34.833)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
giles oldroyd (01:00:42.481)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nigel Taylor (01:00:46.67)
The other piece of this is that this resistance to Gemini virus is the DNA viruses. We can now use that to generate resistance against the Kusaba mosaic disease and disease in other parts of the world, in Asia and in India, and we think it operates in other crops. We have evidence that it's operate, we can make it operate in cotton, tomato, maize.
giles oldroyd (01:01:14.833)
Thanks
Nigel Taylor (01:01:15.138)
And this is a discovery that came from the Kassava program, the VUKR project, which could have much wider impact in many crops around the world.
Nigel Taylor (01:01:27.95)
Ha
Nigel Taylor (01:01:33.76)
It might be a subject for another podcast if that was.
Kevin Folta (01:01:34.021)
So so should I ask that question and can you put a real positive spin on it? Or would rather just not go there?
giles oldroyd (01:01:38.353)
Hmm
Kevin Folta (01:01:45.687)
I th I thought about that. I thought, you know, maybe we could once this is all approved then we go and it's in the field we can come back and revisit and talk about it.
giles oldroyd (01:01:45.925)
Well, so I hope, Kevin, that we'll be celebrating the release of the Brown Street Resistance in the next six months. We'll see.
giles oldroyd (01:01:58.863)
Yeah, sure. I think so. That's great. And we can also talk about the broader benefits of the program, the 18 years of the program.
Nigel Taylor (01:02:00.622)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (01:02:02.959)
Yeah, well that l but let's let's can can you put a note out there to give me a shout when that happens and we'll talk about it then? That 'cause that that would be a really good that
giles oldroyd (01:02:11.823)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Folta (01:02:16.452)
I I like that and I think that also would be a nice landmark for the project project and so so let's do that. I'll I'll get this one together probably for next week or the next week and then we'll go from there. But yeah, but but let me hit stop real quick and upload our audio.
giles oldroyd (01:02:20.144)
Great.
About five seconds of dead air here. I got a little bit of a background noise that I can screen out if I have a sample. So just hold quiet for a second.
Kevin Folta (00:14.072)
Sounds like a jet engine down the street. Okay, here we go.
Kevin Folta (00:22.5)
Hi everybody and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now today we're looking at cassava. It's a hardy root crop that provides dietary lifeline for over a billion people across to grow. yeah.
Nigel Taylor (00:34.168)
So Kevin, I'm really sorry. It's breaking up at my end. I can hardly hear you. Yeah.
giles oldroyd (00:37.455)
Yeah, it's breaking up for me as well. We can't hear you.
Kevin Folta (00:39.32)
Really? Huh. All right, how about well let me just try that that's very strange that it's breaking up.
giles oldroyd (00:44.145)
It's fine now. It's strange when you just went into your... It was all breaking up.
Kevin Folta (00:50.284)
Okay. Well what what might happen and it may sh I should have said this before is just keep rolling because the way the software works is it'll record each of us locally and upload. So the final version, even though it may come across as limited bandwidth, it's actually going up to the cloud in its entirety. So as you're going, just keep on going. If you're s seeing something glitchy happening, just keep on rolling and then I can glue it all together. Okay, let's try it again from the beginning.
And I'll try to have my enunciation better. That was weird. Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now, today we're looking at cassava. It's a hardy root crop that provides a dietary lifeline for over a billion people around the globe, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, while cassava is a pretty durable crop in some ways, it grows in lousy soil, it does okay in drought, it faces naff just massive production challenges.
Farmers fields are plagued by a number of different viruses. It offers a very low nutrition, nutritionally dense product, and it deteriorates rapidly after harvest. But today we're exploring how genetic improvements are stepping in to tackle these challenges, to improve nutrition and build in that durable disease resistance so it can feed the food and secure. There's also really important issues of the social and political resistance that really a much maligned technology is receiving.
And we'll touch on that too. So today we're speaking with Dr. G Giles Oldroyd, he's the president of the Donald Danforth Center, and Dr. Nigel Taylor, he's the Vice President of Impact and Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator, and also the guest on episode twenty-two on the podcast eleven years and five hundred episodes ago. So welcome to the podcast, Giles and Nile Nigel.
giles oldroyd (02:39.952)
Thank you, Kevin.
Nigel Taylor (02:41.422)
Thank you.
Kevin Folta (02:42.243)
Yeah, nice to talk to you again. This is really great because it's always wonderful to check in with a project that we talked about before. And before we get too much into that, let's first start by talking about the Danforth Center. And I just wanted to touch on this first because it's a really special hive of scientists that most people don't know about. So can you tell me a little bit about the Danforth Center and how this connection and proximity to academic research, ag star ag tech startups, and other translational nonprofit ventures
really accelerates the timeline between lab discovery and actually moving products to the field.
giles oldroyd (03:17.774)
Yeah. So the Damfall Center, being, about to celebrate our 28 years since we were founded. We are a mission driven organization. Our mission is to improve the human condition through plant science. And we have three pillars of activity in there, solving food security, increasing sustainability in agriculture, and driving economic development through innovation. So the center, although, you know, we do have a...
context of a traditional academic environment where we have research faculty undertaking research and doing publications, we also take very seriously that point on taking a discovery through to its application all the way to outcomes driving change in the real world. And we see that in multiple ways, so from a very philanthropic context when we're addressing food security and
trying to improve the livelihoods of some of the poorest people on the planet. There we're taking an entirely philanthropic view with regards to how we deliver valuable trades and solutions to farmers. Here in St. Louis, we are also looking at the economic development of our region and the private sector, developing the private sector as well. But increasingly, you know, that's a key issue. Of course, also in countries like Sub-Saharan Africa, you want to be driving up their economy, building
their agricultural economy while we're also addressing food security. you know, really it's a across the board attempt to really solve some of these really challenging problems that we face on the planet. How do we sustainably feed a population of 10 to 12 billion, which is where we're heading and how do we do it in a more equitable manner than where we currently stand?
Kevin Folta (05:09.134)
Very good. And let let's start at the beginning about cassava. I think people don't know what this is, despite the fact that it's a significant world food staple. So could you tell me more about cassava, what it is and its significance to populations throughout the world?
Nigel Taylor (05:26.518)
Yes, sure. Cassava is a little unusual in that it is truly a tropical crop. And this is one of the reasons why here in in North America and in Europe, we're not familiar with cassava, although we do eat it as tapioca on occasions. So cassava, anything below about 10 degrees centigrade and cassava starts to get really unhappy and die. So it's it's grown only in the tropics. Originally, originates
originates in the Amazonian region, but is now spread across all the tropical regions. it's the third most important source of dietary calories in the tropics. Only rice and maize are more important for feeding people and cultivated in about 100 countries. And as you said, by between 800 and a billion, 800 million a billion people.
every day. it's really extremely important there. About 25 million hectares grown around the world now, but 80 % of that is in Africa. And in fact, and I've seen this as you drive along, say in Western Kenya and other parts of Eastern Central Africa, there's 10 times more cassava grown than all the cereals put together. So depending where you are,
Like here in the Midwest, if you drive along the road, you're seeing corn, corn, maize, maize, corn. There in many places is cassava, cassava, cassava. So it's extremely important. It's very important for smallholder farmers because of its resilience to drought, to excessive heat, which is something that we're seeing more and more, unpredictable rain, for example, and poorer soils.
giles oldroyd (06:51.472)
you
Nigel Taylor (07:18.37)
So one of the catch words always is, while other crops fail, there will always be cassava in the ground. And I think I should have said a little bit earlier on the cassava is a root crop. So it captures the energy in its leaves and then pumps that down into its root system and it makes these really large starchy roots. And that's what is harvested by the farmers. It can stay in the ground until the farmer needs it and they harvest at that time.
giles oldroyd (07:39.28)
you
Kevin Folta (07:47.076)
Yeah, I think we can kind of picture what this is. It's just a large but it is actually a root, right? It's not a tuber. It's a actual root itself that's storing the carbohydrate.
Nigel Taylor (07:56.994)
That's correct. That's correct. That makes it actually unique amongst all the major crops. It's a genuine root. Unlike potato, of course, which is a shoot structure under the ground, cassava is a storage root.
Kevin Folta (08:12.046)
Good. And and you r you mentioned that you know this is a pretty durable crop in terms of heat and drought and things like that, but there's a number of threats that do certainly affect it. And so what are the major threats to cassava and how do they impact food security in the developing world?
Nigel Taylor (08:28.214)
Yeah, so the major constraints in Africa where we work most are the two virus diseases, Casablanca Mosaic Disease and Casablanca Brown Streak Disease. Casablanca Mosaic Disease is a DNA virus, Casablanca Brown Streak Disease is an RNA virus. And they're both transmitted by whiteflies and by farmers who take stem cuttings.
to use cassava as a vegetative repropagated. So when they take the cuttings and they plant for the next cropping cycle, they are also transmitting the disease from one cropping cycle to the other. And combined over time, this has a severe impact on the yields of cassava. It's estimated about a billion dollars a year is lost to those two diseases in sub-Saharan Africa put together.
And in Mejori County, for example, in southern Kenya, about 25 % of the crop is lost to Kisabba brown streak disease. And this translates into about $1,200 per hectare per year that smallholder farmers are losing because of brown streak disease. So that's a huge impact on your income. If you're living on a few dollars a day and you're losing that amount of potential, both as food
And of course, you would be selling any excess that you could. So it's an economic impact and a food security threat. So those are the two major diseases. There are other components as well. The whiteflies, as I said, which transmit these diseases, but also stress the plants as well. There are, due to climate change, there have been huge increases in the whitefly population, what's called superabundance whiteflies.
in certain regions and these suppress the yields on their own and then spread the cassava brown streak disease and the cassava mosaic disease.
Kevin Folta (10:32.162)
So ha have there been efforts in vector control? I know seem to remember something about
Nigel Taylor (10:38.612)
It's not practical for smallholder farmers to be using chemicals, for example, which is what we would be doing in the US or in cotton crops, for example, in the Indian subcontinent, you would be spraying to protect, but this is not a viable way for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to control. They can't access the chemicals, it's too expensive, it's just not going to happen.
You have to incorporate the resistance to the disease into the genetics.
Kevin Folta (11:12.356)
Perfect. So let's talk about the genetics and the mechanisms that have been used to f fortify the virus resistance in cassava. So could you walk us through that molecular biology and what specific molecular strategies you've used to stack durable resistance against the vi different viruses?
Nigel Taylor (11:31.758)
So yes, we've used a combination of biotechnology and conventional breeding, which I think is really important, very important part of the story of the success we've had. The RNAi technology is also called pathogen-derived resistance. And this is what we did here in the labs in collaboration with our partners in Kenya and Uganda. And we took a piece of the viral.
the cassava branched-week disease, there's two species of virus that cause that. And we isolated the core protein sequence, the DNA, the core protein sequence, and we generated a gene construct which we integrated into the plants, the cassava genome. And then by doing that, what that does is the plant will transcribe that and it triggers the gene silencing mechanisms, the inherent gene.
silencing mechanisms in the plant. We're just triggering what's naturally already there in the plant by introducing very small sequences of the virus into the plant genome. That triggers the defense mechanisms and really teaches the plant to recognize the virus before it arrives. So conceptually, a little bit like immunization, you're teaching the organism to recognize the pathogen before it arrives.
the plant is pre-armed, recognizes the virus when it's introduced by the white fly, immediately can then target it, chop it up before it can establish disease.
Kevin Folta (13:12.206)
Very good. So it seems to really it really parallels the success the strategies that have been used in crops like papaya now for thirty years, right? This is this is a w a well established mechanism for control that seems to be really durable.
Nigel Taylor (13:26.626)
Yes, exactly. It is in papaya and it's also been demonstrated in other crops. What we did that was novel was to take it and put it into cassava, which had never been done before. yep, we've now tested it. We have performed more than 40 field trials in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. And this technology works really, really well. It surpasses our expectations.
Kevin Folta (13:55.281)
It's it's really exciting. And I know we we talked about this eleven years ago on October twenty-fourth, twenty fifteen, if anyone wants to go back in the archive. But but with that said, you know, how much has progressed in terms of field trials and safety evaluations and other performance assessments to really test its fitness for the field?
Nigel Taylor (14:15.736)
Well, as I said, we performed over 40 field trials now. And also what I should say was in order to combine the two, we had resistance to Kusaba-Brown Streak disease from our biotechnology approach. We then introduced that into breeding programs with our partners in Kenya and Uganda. And these went through breeding programs over a period of, we were just probably starting that in 2015.
We did that through 2016 and onwards. And we now have 16 varieties of the biotech cassava, which we call Kinga Koo cassava, which, as I said, now have proved high-level efficacy in the fields.
Kevin Folta (15:05.466)
Yeah, I was working with some of the regulatory issues in Uganda back in twenty seventeen. And there was a lot of did it didn't even have a biosafety program in place to be able to begin to assess the the crops that were being introduced and they had the Matoke and other things that were developed there, actually in Uganda for Ugandans. And and they didn't even have that ball rolling. So what are the biggest regulatory and biosafety hurdles that you've really
seen and had to overcome in partnership with these different pl different countries and their regulatory organizations.
Nigel Taylor (15:41.176)
Well, from the biosafety point of view, we had very few hurdles, and that was intentional. We designed the technology from the very beginning to have very, very few biosafety hurdles and to have what we would call a low regulatory load. So the RNAi technology, for example, does not express a protein. So we don't need to worry about allergenicity.
things like that, didn't need to do any of those tests. That saved us a huge amount of effort on the regulatory side. Kisaba is not a weedy crop. It is, as I said earlier, its origin is in Amazonia. It has no relatives and does not cross or outcross to any other plant or any other species in Africa. So it's not going to spread in that manner. So we took care of all these things very early.
So biosafety-wise low hurdles. On the regulatory side, that's obviously been challenging. The reason for that was that has not been done before. So we were developing a new path. The regulators in Kenya and Uganda, where we were working with originally, had not done this before. It was a case of engaging with them.
We were all learning as we went along, but we had, of course, very, very experienced regulatory experts here at the Damforce Centre who drove that.
Kevin Folta (17:17.432)
And th one of the other big hurdles from my perspective that I would anticipate is that these innovations are extremely expensive. And whereas commercial biotech you can rely on seed sales to recoup millions of dollars from RD. But how does an independent research institute like the Danforth Center really shepherd a new crop forward that here in the West, you know, we don't really even know about? With a two-decade timeline of development and without a commercial incentive, where does the funding come from to sustain a project like that?
giles oldroyd (17:48.441)
Yes, so I mean think that goes to the core of why a centre like the Damfor Centre exists because these are huge important challenges which impact hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis and if we leave it to the private sector we would not see these solutions coming through.
It requires, as you say, very significant investment, decades of research, hard work here in St. Louis, but also a lot of work also in Kenya, in Uganda, in Rwanda, and that all costs money. Our model, at least in the food security space, is that we look to research granting agencies.
Whether that be the federal government or in this case a lot of funding came from the Gates Foundation. But we also have our own philanthropic giving our own donor community who support us in this work. we are looking to essentially the charitable sector and the philanthropic community to support this work because of the significance of its impact. Now, you know, as we move forwards and as we develop and get much greater food security in African countries,
it's important that we also are developing that private sector. You actually want seed companies, we want seed companies in Kenya and Uganda who have the capability to deliver these new variant cassavas to the farmers who need it most. And we were actually working also to try to develop the seed systems, which is about developing the private sector in those host countries, because it's not just about ensuring you've got food security for the people, it's actually ensuring that you're driving
economic development in these regions that we needed.
Kevin Folta (19:38.213)
The economic development is is a big part of it. If you can have individual propagators who are able to do this, then that does have a nice financial incentive to it. But what about the scientific incentive where Dr. Taylor mentioned that these are propagated by clonal propagules? And so what kind of safeguards have to be in place that's that ensure that smallholder farmers are not spreading any more viruses, that you're getting certified disease free material?
Nigel Taylor (20:08.77)
Yeah, that's part of the formal seed systems that we're building. I think this is something that's becoming, people have realized it's more more important. The biotech knowledge approaches, we can address many issues. And as we've shown with Cassava, we can generate really, really excellent germplasm and varieties for delivery to farmers. But how do you deliver and how do you deliver at scale?
giles oldroyd (20:21.136)
you
Nigel Taylor (20:37.302)
with cassava, we're talking millions and millions of these cuttings. And as you were saying, we need to certify that these are clean. So that's what a formal seed system is composed of, is composed of a rapid propagation component of what we call the early generation seed system. Then there is a certification that these are being clean.
And this is done by the government organizations in Kenya. This will be done by Kepes, for example. And they're experienced in this. They come and they visit the seed farms where the seed has been propagated and they will certify them clean. They're not clean, they'll be rejected and they can't go through the seed system further. are then, seeds, when I say seeds, are little cuttings in cassava.
are then taken to the local level and village level where there are seed merchants who will propagate them further. And they also have to have their field certified as clean before it's distributed or sold to the farmers. So this is the certification and the clean seed component is built into a formal seed system. And this is what's so important about it that we do that. We know that we're delivering quality to the farmer.
Kevin Folta (21:54.937)
Very good. So we're speaking with Dr. Giles Oldroyd and Dr. Nigel Taylor of the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and we're covering what's happening in disease-tolerant or disease-resistant cassava. This is intended for propagation in sub-Saharan Africa. So this is the Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll be back in just a moment. And then we take a little break here. Doing okay so far? Sounds good? Yeah, yeah. Really?
giles oldroyd (22:19.856)
Yeah, great. I mean you are breaking up quite a bit Kevin sometimes sometimes you're fine sometimes we can't we Hardly hear you but but you what we have your No, now you're totally fine and then But we have your script so it's okay
Kevin Folta (22:24.792)
Yeah.
That's very surprising. Yeah, the script. Yeah. All right. That's really s you know, that's interesting 'cause I've never had the problem when I do this from work. When I do it from home. I live out in the country. I live in the middle of nowhere. And there my internet is, you know, a bird lands on the wire and it's you know. All right. But I'll but hang with us here and we'll this'll come through fine in the end here. I I'm ninety nine percent uploaded, so it should be Yes.
Nigel Taylor (22:30.498)
You're good now.
giles oldroyd (22:43.673)
Hmm
Nigel Taylor (22:55.342)
Kevin.
Nigel Taylor (22:59.08)
Could I make a, and I think I missed it when I talked about that is, you asked about the regulatory overcoming the regulator hurdles. I would like to say what we have achieved on the regulatory approvals in Kenya and Rwanda. then I will pro I mean, you can tell me you mentioned Uganda, but we are not able to progress in Uganda because they never passed the laws to put the regulatory system in place. So
Kevin Folta (23:10.138)
Cool.
Kevin Folta (23:22.456)
He never did it. Damn.
Nigel Taylor (23:27.478)
I can comment on that as well if you wish.
Kevin Folta (23:29.934)
Yeah, that's good. I'll I'll I'll we'll start with that. I I was there I think it was let's see, the probably
probably eight years ago this week and I was talking to the it was the Minister of Science and Agri Science and Medicine and he was going to go in front of Parliament and talk about these things and he didn't know about transgenic crops. So I was coaching him up. And and that was it worked out really, really well 'cause they got it approved through Parliament two weeks later. But then it got vetoed by the president apparently so that was the heartbreaker. But well all right so we'll d
Nigel Taylor (24:03.618)
Yeah, that's true.
giles oldroyd (24:06.98)
And I also just.
Kevin Folta (24:07.66)
back and and we can ask about, you know, what does the current regulatory climate look like in in the Lakes region or in that area of Africa with respect to where there are systems even in place to be able to start regulatory processes. Is that good?
So we'll start with that.
giles oldroyd (24:26.552)
Yeah, it would be good to get a point. I don't know if I have the space in your questions or Nigel, you can make this point. know, virus was this, this technology of using the, the, the RNAi to, to silence viruses. has been available in papaya for nearly, is it 20 years since they released the papaya? Is it 30 years in Hawaii? And you know, in part that's because everything was aligned.
Kevin Folta (24:45.092)
Yeah, thirty. Yeah. Thirty years, yeah it'll be
giles oldroyd (24:53.174)
And the policy environment was aligned, the grower community was there, the consumers were accepting. There was a huge problem in Hawaii that if they didn't deal with it, the whole papaya industry was gone. But it was perfect alignment of all of those processes. Everything was lined up. That meant it went out fast and it's been delivering for 30 years now, right? I guess papaya ringspot is gone and still in Hawaii. I guess it's never, has it ever reoccurred? Do we know?
I guess not.
Kevin Folta (25:24.73)
Yeah, I I yeah.
Nigel Taylor (25:24.76)
My understanding is that people have started growing conventional material again because the disease pressure goes down so much over time if there's nothing there for it to, so you can actually, yeah, you have an epidemiological effect. But then Hawaii is special because it is isolated and there's nothing else coming in and out.
giles oldroyd (25:30.448)
giles oldroyd (25:35.394)
Interesting.
Kevin Folta (25:43.544)
That's right.
giles oldroyd (25:43.865)
Sure. Yeah, sure. However, I think it's a useful point to make that, you know, that when everything's aligned, it can go fast. When you're having to build from the big from scratch and you know, you have to put all the policy and everything's going in place. It's a much harder, it's a much harder ball.
Kevin Folta (25:46.266)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (26:04.344)
Well, the the other side of the coin is you had a papaya, which is relatively under the radar in terms of a crop, but then you also didn't have the excessive communication through the internet in nineteen ninety six through ninety eight as this approval process was ha taking place. And so you hadn't yet mobilized the the anti genetic engineering folks outside of a couple of folks who were active back then.
giles oldroyd (26:18.106)
Well, that's true as well, yeah.
giles oldroyd (26:27.566)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Folta (26:28.996)
But in and and and they're gone now, those folks are but so in in general they I mean that was even before the sun drop potatoes or whatever that sundew potatoes. So but we'll dive back in with we'll start out with that regulatory climate question and and maybe I'll even mention why is it so why was it so easy back then for Papaya or something like that. We'll we'll we'll see how it sounds. All right, so here we go.
giles oldroyd (26:54.51)
Hmm. Hmm.
Nigel Taylor (26:55.63)
Could do Kevin. You know, the other point would be, it's been doing this for 18 years. We started, well, 2008, yep, 2008 on this. 18 years is a really long time. And we're still, we're getting close, but we haven't deployed yet. Takes a long time and I can comment on that if you wish. And then also that's Kenya. But in Rwanda, kind of to the Giles point, it's gone so much quicker because of
giles oldroyd (27:21.136)
Hmm.
Nigel Taylor (27:26.232)
the information we have in place and an enabling policy environment.
Kevin Folta (27:31.618)
Excellent. Let's talk let's start out talking about that. We'll we'll go from there. That sounds good. Here we go. Let me make sure I find my starting point here.
Nigel Taylor (27:43.822)
Feel free to talk on the papaya piece, Giles, whenever it comes up.
giles oldroyd (27:46.456)
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Folta (27:47.618)
Yeah, let's we'll start out kinda with let me f I'm trying to figure out where I where I dropped off here. Okay, here we go.
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Giles Oldword, the president of the Donald Danforth Center, and Dr. Nigel Taylor, who is the Vice President of Impact and the Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator at Danforth Center. And before the break, we were talking about the innovations that are happening in Cassava, but all of this has to happen on some sort of a regulatory backdrop if we're going to have these things moving from the innovation to the application. And can you give me an idea of where this stands?
now in Africa, how you know, how how is Uganda different from Kenya, different from Rwanda? And what do you think is really underlying the differences that we see in that regulatory climate?
Kevin Folta (28:45.809)
Oops, did I drop out there? Okay. Okay. I so I I let me try it one more time. That's really strange. I'd never have had a problem with this before. So maybe I let me try this. Make sure everything's plugged in.
Nigel Taylor (28:47.212)
Yep, yeah you did at the end.
giles oldroyd (29:02.338)
You're going to answer this question, right, Nigel?
Kevin Folta (29:02.979)
Okay. Alright, here go. Does that sound okay? Are we doing alright? Let me go back to okay. Alright, here we go.
Nigel Taylor (29:07.636)
Yes, yes, I'll take this Charles. it comes to the,
Kevin Folta (29:14.118)
So
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Giles Olroyd and Dr. Niles Taylor from the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and we're talking about cassava, mostly innovations in virus resistance that will make the crop more durable and allow it to serve more people in sub-Saharan Africa. And before the break, we talked about the virus resistance mechanisms and some ways this would work. But to have the the crop in your hand and have different varieties ready to go, but you have
to surpass this regulatory climate and so can you explain what's happening right now in places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya in terms of their individual regulatory networks and how they're different. Maybe you know how is it going in one place versus another?
Nigel Taylor (30:05.09)
Yes, it's kind of a different story depending on which country we've been working in. And as you say, we've been engaged with the Kinga Kua virus resistant cassava in Kenya since about 2008. We started the work, so it's been 18 years now. On the regulatory side, we've made significant process. We submitted an application to the National Biosafety Authority.
in 2020 and Kinga Kuu Kusaba is approved as safe for food feed in the environment, approved by the National Biosafety Authority in Kenya. We've moved through there in Kenya. You also have to have approvals from the National Environmental Management Agency, NEMA, in Kenya. They have a relatively complex regulatory framework in Kenya. So we've been working our way through all of these steps, approvals at each stage.
giles oldroyd (30:53.808)
you
Nigel Taylor (31:03.754)
and also national performance trials. So we had to perform national performance trials in Kenya and seven different locations over two years. A lot of work in order for us to be able to register these as varieties and release to farmers. So in Kenya right now, that's where we are. We're waiting for variety registration of our eight Kinga Kuu varieties. And at the moment though, we are
We were paused, unfortunately, and we're waiting for a ruling from the Kenyan Court of Appeals there. In that case, we're waiting on that ruling. We were expecting an April. As soon as we get that ruling, we can move forward, get variety of registration, and deliver to the farmers. The process in Rwanda has been dramatically different and so much quicker.
The reason for that is a strong enabling policy environment from leadership in Rwanda who recognize the value of not just virus resistant cassava, but insect resistant maize, late blight resistant potato, and they want these crops to enable their farmers. So in Rwanda, we were able to build what's called data transferability, all the work that we done in Kenya.
we were able to transfer almost all of the biosafety data into an application in Rwanda. And therefore we've gone very much faster in Rwanda. Starting in 2019, we also have approval for Kingukku in Rwanda. We finished national performance trials and we're waiting for, same, we're waiting for variety registration. Unfortunately in Uganda, where we were working and one of our very strong partners, we've not been able to progress.
giles oldroyd (32:56.272)
you
Nigel Taylor (32:58.248)
And the reason being that Uganda have not been able to pass into law the necessary regulatory framework and regulatory requirements needed to approve a crop and deliver to farmers. So we have different stories of slow steady progress over a long time, very quick progress when we have an enabling environment and in other places where hoping Uganda will come.
back on and be able to deploy, but at the moment we're waiting there.
Kevin Folta (33:30.373)
Yeah, I always found it very contrasting that the excitement of scientists in the African continent for this new technology who are saying me too, me too. And you know, Joe Giles, you were just at the African Food Systems Forum recently and w how did you perceive the current interest in modern biotech when you look at African farmers or scientists or even the public and policy makers? You know, what's the temperature over there to accept this kind of technology?
giles oldroyd (33:57.265)
Well, I would say the broader environment is a recognition that there needs to be a massive increase in the productivity of African crops, not just to underpin
food security, but also to drive the economic development of those regions. These are critical crops. So cassava, you can process it into starch, and then you can be exporting starch, which is a very valuable product. This is something that Thailand does extensively, but in Africa, actually, Brown Street, particularly in East Africa, Brown Street disease limits the capability to get that investment into the industry in order to be processing. So I saw in the Africa food system,
forum a real desire and recognition of the importance of raising agricultural production overall as a driver for the economic development of the region. And there's also a recognition that in order to achieve that you really need to embrace some of these new technologies and facilitate their release in order to advance the crops that you're targeting. And picking up on what Nigel said, you know, it's really it's where you get that alignment.
of all of the factors where you've got the traits available to tackle some of the problems in those target crops. You've got the regulatory environment already established. You've got leadership that are supporting the advancement of those traits, as well as the pull, the private sector pull, the farmer pull desiring those traits and wanting to see the increased production from, and reliable increased production from those
crops. That is not the case in all African countries, far from it. But in certain places, most especially what we're seeing in Rwanda, a real alignment of all of those factors coming together that's just allowing the advancement of a lot of new trades coming into getting to the farmers, getting to the farmers that need it most, but also recognizing that once you raise that productivity for the farmers, and most especially when you raise the reliability of productivity, you encourage investment, private sector
giles oldroyd (36:11.09)
investment into both, for instance, the seed systems because you're bringing value to those crops, but also into the processing end, how you process those crops, not just necessarily food crops, they can also be high-value crops in their own right, driving investment into country and then bringing export value to those countries and driving up the development of those countries. A lot of economic development starts with agriculture. It's the agricultural body that
growth in agricultural productivity that really can drive the initial development of a country and certainly African governments are recognizing that and some of those governments are pushing hard to create the whole environment alignment of all of these aspects in order to recognize that growth in the agriculture, the agricultural base driving economic development for the farmers but also for the country as a whole.
Kevin Folta (37:09.061)
Well, one of the funny parts about driving economic development and doing good things in agriculture, look at the Green Revolution, it's got its critics, right? They say that well you know, when you start to intensify
agriculture even in the interest of food security that you have this big issue of now intense you intensification of use of fertilizers and other types of inputs. So how do you balance that? How do you balance the need for yields and for nutritious food against the environmental impacts of farming and the intensification of input use
giles oldroyd (37:40.305)
I mean that is a really interesting challenge. think that when we look at the Green Revolution, it's created what I think is a false perspective that there is a conflict between agricultural development and the environment. That's just because that's how we designed the system historically. I actually think now, especially with the advancements of gene editing, we can move fast in redesigning the agricultural system.
systems. And when you look out in nature, there are solutions for all of the problems that we face in agriculture, including the delivery of nutrients to crops, which is a key foundation of the Green Revolution. We currently hear it here in the US, but also in Europe. We're reliant on chemical fixation or mining of these nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus. And then we apply them at high concentrations to our fields and we lose a lot of those chemicals out into the environment with significant consequences too.
environmental health and human health. We are not trapped in that system. There are solutions. Nature has solutions. There are bacteria that feed plants with the nitrogen. There are fungi that feed plants with the phosphate. We have not used these natural solutions very extensively in our agriculture. We're currently limited in the use of these. But we here at the Damfor Centre believe we can transform that agricultural system to one that
much more sustainable and technologies like gene editing is really going to fast pace that capability. So I hope that as we advance agricultural development in places like Africa, you can bypass
some of these quite polluting, environmentally polluting solutions that we currently rely on. In Africa, we saw a transformation in telephone technology. And it wasn't because they put all the investment in the landlines. It's because they just went straight to cell phones. And that transformed the landscape. I think that we can do something similar in agriculture. We don't have to go back, sort of follow the same trajectory of agricultural development that we did back in the 1960s.
giles oldroyd (39:56.245)
advance both sustainable and secure food production in a radically new way and that's I find that very exciting from the African landscape of that possibility. Having said that we also have to be cognizant that we in the high-income countries are relying on chemical additions to drive out our own food production and we don't want to be Mary Antoinette and say African farmers, smallholder farmers in Africa shouldn't have access to these inputs. They have as much right to get access to these
inputs and as we drive up economic development they will be able to afford some of those inputs. Food security really is important and if it comes, if we have to put agricultural inputs in to drive up that food security I think we have to accept that because that's exactly what we're doing here in America or in Europe. That underpins our own food security. Having said that, if we can bypass that and drive a much more sustainable agricultural development I think that that is the ultimate moonshot that I think we're also
we're striving to achieve here at the Damforth Centre, aligning sustainability and agriculture alongside food security, both transforming how we do agriculture in high income countries like America or Europe, but also really transforming both the sustainability and security of food production in Africa.
Kevin Folta (41:17.401)
No, very good. But you know, the other side of that coin too is it that should be part of the moonshot is the consumer. Because look what we've done here for years is so many breeding programs, they they they made the fruits bigger, they made farmers happy, they made the the breeders came up with new products for industry, but maybe they fell a little short of consumer expectation in terms of flavor aroma, that kind of thing. So how much work is actually going into the consumer end?
giles oldroyd (41:37.936)
Hmm?
Kevin Folta (41:44.853)
in in you know, Africa isn't just one monolith. I mean you have different tastes and different preferences and different parts. So how much does the consumer play a role in shaping cultivar develop?
giles oldroyd (41:54.289)
I asked a really important question. mean, we were ultimately it is a consumer who's who's who's buying these these products. And so it's very important that you keep that in mind. Food is really important to people is not just
It's not just calories, it's part of our culture and across the board we have strong cultural and family connections around food and around the family meal. We believe here at the Damfor Center we have to be hugely respectful of that and alongside to the point on the cassava, as Nigel said, we've actually got it. We've been breeding the virus resistant technologies into farmer preferred varieties in countries.
to cassava varieties that are preferred in Kenya, cassava varieties that are preferred in Uganda, and cassava varieties that are preferred in Rwanda. And those preferred varieties are being developed by the governments in those countries through their own breeding programs. Or it's just been selected as these are the varieties that the farmers prefer, and they prefer them in part because they're optimized for those regional countries in their growth habits, but also because
because the people who are consuming them prefer specific aspects of that, the way it tastes, the way you process, the way it cooks, etc. etc. We have to be hugely respectful of that. And so it's not just about releasing a single variety of cassava in this case, or a single variety of cowpea. We haven't done that. We've actually ensured that we've got our technologies into the varieties that the people in those regions prefer.
think you have to be respectful of that and that's really important.
Nigel Taylor (43:45.634)
Yeah, Kevin, I mean, we, with the cassava and our other crops as well, there's a strong farmer participatory component. The farmers come to the fields, they see the crop. We've done that in Kenya and Rwanda, and they actually help us select sometimes. You know, this is the shape of the root that we like. And then we do cooking and organoleptic testing. So for example, we have one of our varieties in Kenya, which takes 40 minutes to
Kevin Folta (43:48.91)
that's great that there's a d go ahead.
Nigel Taylor (44:15.416)
cook to softness compared with 20. So you can see for the smallholder farmer, they're going to want the 20 minute one, not the 40 minute one. But the 40 minute one, we're going to bring in the processors and the starch industrialists and the guys who want to generate biofuel and ethanol. So we may end up with more than one product, in fact several products. But there is a strong farmer and consumer
component to this and it's built in as we develop the products.
Kevin Folta (44:54.034)
that's really great. So you have a diversity of cultivars and a diversity of places that are being trialed and and
hopefully being ultimately deployed. But there's also going to be different tr different challenges to those different regions or different areas as well. And so how is the Damforth Center and your project using the modern tools like Cas9 and other types of site directed nucleases to make specific edits or maybe make other types of changes to even further customize these individual varieties for individual countries or individual farm areas.
Nigel Taylor (45:28.154)
Maybe I will say a little bit about Cassava and then I'll pass it to Giles for a bigger picture. In Cassava, we are just starting a project now where we're using CRISPR-Cas gene editing to look at modifying ribisco capillaries. Because we're aware that as the climate changes, it's going to get hotter, we want to make sure that the cassava crop is going to be resilient to these increasing temperatures.
and we don't lose photosynthetic ability. So that's one area that we're applying this also for disease resistance in Kisawa. But we're also at the Damford Centre applying this now to a range of crops, a range of African crops, which are relevant to smallholder farmers and to big processing.
giles oldroyd (46:19.566)
Yes, so picking up on that, there's a lot of cereals that are native to Africa. So that means they originate from Africa and they've been domesticated in Africa. These are the millets, most especially things like Teff, which is a key product in Ethiopia. But sorghum also is a native cereal to Africa.
and then other millet, finger millet, pearl millet, phonio. These are really important crops because they are naturally climate resilient. They are all crops that are actually already very robust to heat and drought tolerance and they have evolved within the landscape that is natural to Africa. However, the production of those crops is pretty shockingly low. Taffy, looking about one and a half to two tons per hectare.
In finger millets and pearl millets, we're looking at less than one ton per hectare. If you compare that to productivity of corn here in the US, in the US we're achieving, you know, seven, eight, nine, even 10 tons per hectare. And for things like wheat in Europe, you're in the same range, seven, eight, nine tons per hectare. So productivity for basic cereals in Europe and the US is really high and productivity of Africa
domesticated cereals is extremely low. The reason for that is it's principally breeding.
But that is also a biotech contribution, most especially in maize, in raising that productivity. Now I see a huge opportunity here to fast-paced the breeding that we have seen in our high-income cereals into African cereals and to use most especially gene editing to drive that fast-paced for improvement. Because essentially what gene editing is doing is bringing the genetic diversity that's already naturally available within the species
giles oldroyd (48:16.882)
in a very intentional and targeted way. I prefer to call it precision breeding because I think that's what it really is. And I think with precision breeding, we can really advance the improvement of all of our crops, but most especially some of these very unimproved crops that a lot of African farmers are dependent on. What has in America and in Europe has taken us 100 years to get to those massive gains in our cereal productivity. I think we can achieve that in a decade.
now with the new technologies and with precision breeding can rapidly increase the pace of crop improvement. I think the opportunity is immense, it's very exciting and here at the Danforth Centre we're really applying all technologies including breeding into the pipeline to improve crops for both Africa but also for the US.
Kevin Folta (49:14.639)
No, very good. And it's a much faster way to do it too. I mean when you look at the Verca plus Cassava, this is s cassava's span many years. This has gone
two decades at least, right? So what's true about the Danforth Center that really supports this kind of long term translational impact when in other places we'd be checking boxes like journal papers and grant proposals, this kind of thing that really would wouldn't support it. So what what is what's going on at the Danforth Center in in the general culture that makes this kind of thing possible?
giles oldroyd (49:42.545)
I think number one, it's the simplicity of being mission driven.
So, you know, most universities are, would have a mission, but their mission is much, much broader. We have a very explicit mission, which is to improve the human condition through plant science. And that was from our very foundation. That was our mission. There's an intentionality that has come into this, how we structure, how we think at the NAMFOR Center, how we structure the organization and how we structure our partnerships around. are in it for impact. We are here to drive impact. Now we do have to recognize
that for some of our staff members to advance within their research, to advance within their careers, I'm sorry, we need to publish. And publications is important because it's communicating too. It's one way we drive impact is to advance communication. But I think in academia, we put too much emphasis on that particular point of advancing knowledge through publication without necessarily paying a sufficient attention to how you take that knowledge to driving impact. Here at the Danforth Centre, that is core to our existence.
is that we are generating knowledge with the intention of driving real-world impact. And I think just having that as a simplicity in our vision and a mission and in how we function and how our foundation exists, it's just meant that we're very nimble and streamlined towards getting that impact. And that's very different to a traditional university context which actually has a much broader mission than that.
and therefore is structured very differently to how the Damfall Centre is structured.
Kevin Folta (51:26.907)
Well and with that in mind, I you know maybe this is the last question for Dr. Taylor here is you know that this has been a long marathon for you and and that clearly you've invested a lot of your time and and your career into this. And what does this breaking the tape look like? Like where what kind of time frame do you think we're looking at in terms of best case scenario and you know what when do you think this actually may reach the people it's meant to serve?
Nigel Taylor (51:48.91)
I'm sorry, Kevin, I did not. You broke at the critical point. Are you talking cassava or the other crops? Okay.
Kevin Folta (51:57.615)
Yeah. Yeah, cassava, yeah. So so the the the w let me just try that again. I think I I think I know why I'm breaking up now. but you know you've invested a huge amount of time of your career in this and and a lot of a lot of energy and resources over the last two decades. And so what does the end of the marathon look like here? W what kind when do we think that these products will finally meet finally reach the people they were meant to serve?
Nigel Taylor (52:22.158)
We're optimistic that we will be delivering, releasing to farmers in Kenya and or Rwanda next year, 2027. So my vision, our vision, and it's been done with many partners, is to have people eating our products, for making a contribution to their households and to their incomes. I keep coming back to that. It's not just about food security.
It's about generating incomes and better choices for farmers and the farming households. Also, the Kinga Kuka Sava is, what next with that? We don't want to stop there. So we can now, the breeders will be using it to breed into the future for new traits like climate resilience, enhanced climate resilience, enhanced nutrition into the future and to a wider geographical area.
My vision is to have Kinga, Kuwikasaba, you know, being grown and consumed by millions of farming households across sub-Saharan Africa.
Kevin Folta (53:36.443)
Well that's awesome. I hope you come back on the podcast when that happens 'cause it'd be great to celebrate that with you. if people wanted to learn more about the project, listeners wanted to learn more, maybe be donors, where would they look online?
giles oldroyd (53:53.968)
Yeah, I mean, I heard you, Kevin, so I can...
Kevin Folta (53:55.003)
Did I drop out on that one?
giles oldroyd (53:57.522)
So if you want to learn more about the Verka project or more broadly about the Danforth Centre, you can look at us online at danforthcentre.org and we also have accounts, most especially on LinkedIn, and you can follow us at LinkedIn at Danforth Centre. the Verka project is one key aspect of what we do, but we actually contribute to the improvement of a large array of crops.
Kevin Folta (53:59.109)
Wow, d this was really bad. Okay, okay. Yeah, go for it.
giles oldroyd (54:27.695)
driving food security in Africa and broadly sustainability in agriculture across the world.
Kevin Folta (54:42.734)
very good. Well thank you very much for joining me today. thank you good to see you again, Giles and Nigel. and best wishes going forward.
giles oldroyd (54:45.517)
Great, thank you.
Nigel Taylor (54:47.022)
Thank you. Great talking with you.
Kevin Folta (54:56.134)
And and this is a really nice example of how we can watch progress over time. That when we look at a project that's been in development for decades, we can see how it starts and follow it through time. But here we are sitting t sitting ten years or eleven years after the first time we spoke about the project here on the podcast. and that was already a good significant part into a mature project. And now it's finally getting to hit the field, which is really exciting. Well this is the Talking Biotech Podcast, and we'll talk to again next week.
giles oldroyd (55:00.709)
Hmm. Hmm.
giles oldroyd (55:26.161)
I think one thing that we probably didn't touch up, what we didn't touch on, is the challenge of the, one thing that Nigel, he was in field trials in 2011, I think, right Nigel? Your first field trials? In Africa? And, and, so the field trials started 15 years ago, whatever, in that sort of range. And, you know, the Brown Street technology worked.
Kevin Folta (55:26.217)
And that's it. So was there anything else we needed to add to splice back in? I think I think we covered it all.
Nigel Taylor (55:40.244)
Yeah, yeah, what before that actually, but yeah
giles oldroyd (55:51.472)
That was clear, but the problem was that they'd become susceptible to Mosaic virus. And in fact, it was not logical that what the problem, you would assume it was because there was something with the Brown streak resistance that had made the Mosaic virus created the Mosaic virus susceptibility wasn't at all. It was actually because of how the cassava was resistant to Mosaic virus and the process of transformation. It's kind of complicated. It's hard to describe.
I don't know if we want to get there, but for me, it's you know, it's often not a linear path. You're like, okay, here's the solution we have in our head as a scientist, here's the solution, and we're going to just follow from A to B to C to D, and the consumer is gonna get it at the end. It's rarely that clear. know, once you're doing this sort of strategic research.
you get out in the field and you find out something that you didn't anticipate and then you have to go back to the drawing board and solve that problem. And you know, it's been a long journey to get to where we are right now, but Nigel solved the mosaic virus problem.
as well as the, or solve the intrinsic mosaic virus problem that emerged, as well as solving that Brown streak resistance or solving Brown streak susceptibility. it's now, you know, that is part of the reason the journey has been so long is just because, you know, it's rarely a linear path to get there.
giles oldroyd (57:27.761)
Do you want in Idol? I think because I think the one thing where we, know, yes it's true that we, has been a long time, but we don't necessarily have to, it doesn't necessarily have to be that long with all the other new future trades.
Kevin Folta (57:29.016)
Yeah. Well I I mean I could touch on that now if you'd like me to ask. It's you know, there's ways I can phrase that. Let's go for it. I'll and I can I can try
Nigel Taylor (57:43.886)
So are you taking this, Charles? Me?
giles oldroyd (57:46.609)
I can. Do you want me to take it or do you want to take it? It's more your stuff, Nigel.
Kevin Folta (57:47.503)
Yeah, yeah. Let me let me let's go for it. Here we go.
Nigel Taylor (57:52.366)
Okay, so one of the things I'm a little nervous about this is I don't want to leave an impression that when you do genetic modification, you are going to make unpredicted changes.
giles oldroyd (57:59.92)
Yeah, mm-hmm.
giles oldroyd (58:04.945)
Yeah, well, was as I was saying it I was like, yeah, you're just describing that uh-huh
Kevin Folta (58:08.111)
Mm, yeah.
Nigel Taylor (58:08.352)
Yeah, and when we went through our regulatory package, we had to be really careful about this because it said, did you make any unpredicted changes? we, well, Giles is correct. It is a part of the story, an important part. The other important part of it is if we had not come across this problem, we would have made one variety that would have been super resistant to both diseases.
Kevin Folta (58:15.735)
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.
giles oldroyd (58:20.515)
Okay, we can, we maybe as-
Kevin Folta (58:21.498)
Ha ha ha.
Kevin Folta (58:28.121)
Right. Well
Nigel Taylor (58:36.834)
and then tried to force it or make it fit across all of East Africa. Because we had to now go into our breeding program to bring the Brown Street back, sorry, to bring the mosaic disease resistance back in, we now have 16 varieties. And now we can, the penetration in the product we have is so much more impactful or potentially impactful.
giles oldroyd (58:59.473)
Well, mean another outcome or impact from the Cassava program is because Nigel had that problem, we at the Damfor Center started a research program understanding what is the cause of mosaic virus resistance and now we understand what is under Pinsmovase, the mosaic virus resistance in Cassava and it's very different to any other mechanism of disease resistance we know about. It's actually a mutation in DNA polymerase. Is it DNA or RNA polymerase? can't remember. Is it RNA polymerase, Nigel?
Nigel Taylor (59:26.895)
The DNA polymerase, yes.
giles oldroyd (59:29.253)
DNA, thank you, the DNA polymerase, that actually makes the polymerase less effective. And so therefore can't replicate the virus as effectively. And it's kind of surprising, right, that you have a mutation in a polymerase, something as fundamental as a polymerase, and that would expect to carry a disadvantage to the plant. But in this case, it carries an advantage because it blocks the mosaic virus.
Kevin Folta (59:46.083)
I see.
Kevin Folta (01:00:00.747)
I I I think the only way we could really do this in a strategically positive way would be to frame it in were there any surprises along the way that actually enhanced y you the the benefit to the to the farmer and the benefit of the product. Because if if if you if it's framed as a problem or a surprise, then that doesn't look good from a regulatory standpoint. But if it's framed as you know, as we're going we learn more about how other resistances may interact with this and
giles oldroyd (01:00:01.68)
Mmm, there you go.
giles oldroyd (01:00:15.217)
Hmm.
giles oldroyd (01:00:22.961)
Hmm.
Kevin Folta (01:00:30.461)
how how we could build in a more durable resistance by by paying attention to these signals as we go. You know if you frame it like that it's more strategically how the benefit of the of the other virus and what you learn from it rather than making it sound like a surprise or a liability. So if if you can frame it like that I think it's good. But I mean do you want to
giles oldroyd (01:00:34.833)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
giles oldroyd (01:00:42.481)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nigel Taylor (01:00:46.67)
The other piece of this is that this resistance to Gemini virus is the DNA viruses. We can now use that to generate resistance against the Kusaba mosaic disease and disease in other parts of the world, in Asia and in India, and we think it operates in other crops. We have evidence that it's operate, we can make it operate in cotton, tomato, maize.
giles oldroyd (01:01:14.833)
Thanks
Nigel Taylor (01:01:15.138)
And this is a discovery that came from the Kassava program, the VUKR project, which could have much wider impact in many crops around the world.
Nigel Taylor (01:01:27.95)
Ha
Nigel Taylor (01:01:33.76)
It might be a subject for another podcast if that was.
Kevin Folta (01:01:34.021)
So so should I ask that question and can you put a real positive spin on it? Or would rather just not go there?
giles oldroyd (01:01:38.353)
Hmm
Kevin Folta (01:01:45.687)
I th I thought about that. I thought, you know, maybe we could once this is all approved then we go and it's in the field we can come back and revisit and talk about it.
giles oldroyd (01:01:45.925)
Well, so I hope, Kevin, that we'll be celebrating the release of the Brown Street Resistance in the next six months. We'll see.
giles oldroyd (01:01:58.863)
Yeah, sure. I think so. That's great. And we can also talk about the broader benefits of the program, the 18 years of the program.
Nigel Taylor (01:02:00.622)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (01:02:02.959)
Yeah, well that l but let's let's can can you put a note out there to give me a shout when that happens and we'll talk about it then? That 'cause that that would be a really good that
giles oldroyd (01:02:11.823)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Folta (01:02:16.452)
I I like that and I think that also would be a nice landmark for the project project and so so let's do that. I'll I'll get this one together probably for next week or the next week and then we'll go from there. But yeah, but but let me hit stop real quick and upload our audio.
giles oldroyd (01:02:20.144)
Great.
