Engineering Crops From the Inside Out

Global agriculture faces a difficult balancing act: feeding a growing population while reducing environmental impact and adapting to climate change. A newly funded biotechnology startup from Manchester believes it has a technological answer to part of that challenge.

Cytotrait, a spinout from the University of Manchester, has secured £3 million in seed funding to develop advanced genetic engineering approaches for major crops. The round was led by Northern Gritstone, with participation from the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund and the Northern Universities Venture Fund. The investment will allow the company to expand development programmes aimed at improving the productivity, resilience and environmental footprint of staple crops such as wheat, maize, potato and canola.

While early stage funding announcements are common in the rapidly growing agritech sector, Cytotrait’s platform technology reflects a broader shift in how scientists are approaching crop engineering. Instead of focusing solely on the nuclear genome, the central DNA repository within plant cells, the company is targeting genes in cellular organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria.

Engineering beyond the nucleus

At the centre of Cytotrait’s approach is a technology known as the Mutant Organelle Selection System, or MOSS. The system enables scientists to introduce genes or gene edits into chloroplasts and mitochondria and rapidly achieve “homoplasmy”, meaning every copy of the organelle genome within a plant cell carries the engineered change.

This is significant because plant cells can contain hundreds of copies of organelle genomes. In conventional engineering approaches, only a fraction of these copies may initially carry a modification, creating inconsistencies in gene expression and complicating breeding programmes.

By ensuring uniform genetic modification across organelles, MOSS could enable high level, localised expression of engineered traits. According to Cytotrait, this offers several practical advantages: reduced toxicity from transgene expression, improved ability to combine multiple traits in a single plant line, and potentially more straightforward regulatory pathways.

Engineering traits in chloroplasts can also provide a natural containment mechanism. In many crops, chloroplast DNA is inherited primarily through the maternal line, which can limit the spread of engineered genes through pollen, a long standing concern in agricultural biotechnology.

These characteristics could make organelle based engineering particularly attractive for applications where strong expression of specific proteins or metabolic pathways is needed.

Applications across major crops

With the new funding, Cytotrait plans to initiate research programmes targeting several globally important crops in European and North American markets. These include wheat and maize, two of the world’s most widely cultivated grains, as well as potatoes and canola.

The company is exploring a range of potential applications. Some focus on traditional agricultural priorities such as higher yields or increased resilience to environmental stresses. Others aim to introduce entirely new traits that could enhance the nutritional value or functionality of crop products.

A third area of interest reflects a growing trend in agricultural biotechnology: designing crops that contribute to climate mitigation. Cytotrait suggests its technology could enable traits that enhance carbon sequestration, potentially allowing crops to capture and store more carbon in plant biomass or soils.

If realised, such capabilities would place crop biotechnology squarely within the emerging field of climate-positive agriculture, an area attracting increasing attention from investors and policymakers.

Building on earlier research support

The company has already received early validation from UK public research funding bodies. In 2025, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency awarded Cytotrait nearly £500,000 to apply its technology to hybrid seed production in wheat.

Hybrid seeds, created by crossing genetically distinct parent plants, can dramatically increase crop yields through hybrid vigour. However, producing hybrid wheat reliably has long been a technical challenge. Technologies that enable controlled male sterility or fertility restoration in crops are therefore considered valuable tools for seed companies.

Cytotrait’s research aims to use organelle engineering to create more reliable systems for hybrid seed production, potentially unlocking new yield gains in one of the world’s most important staple crops.

A growing ecosystem for agritech spinouts

The company also reflects the growing role of university spinouts in the biotechnology sector. Cytotrait emerged from research conducted at the University of Manchester and was commercialised with support from the institution’s technology transfer arm, the University of Manchester Innovation Factory.

It also participated in NG Studios, a venture building programme run by Northern Gritstone that focuses on deep technology startups originating from northern UK universities. Such programmes aim to bridge a persistent gap between academic discovery and commercial development.

This ecosystem is increasingly important for translating advances in synthetic biology and engineering biology into real-world applications. Agricultural biotechnology, in particular, often requires substantial early investment before products reach the field.

The broader context: food security and sustainability

Cytotrait’s funding announcement comes at a time when global food systems face mounting pressure. The world’s population is projected to approach 10 billion by mid century, while climate change is already affecting crop yields in many regions.

At the same time, agriculture itself is responsible for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. Producing more food with fewer resources, such as land, water and fertiliser, has become a key goal for both governments and the agricultural industry.

Biotechnology is widely viewed as one of the tools that could help meet that challenge. Advances in gene editing, synthetic biology and plant engineering are enabling researchers to design crops that are more resilient to drought, heat and disease, while also improving resource efficiency.

However, regulatory hurdles and public acceptance remain significant factors shaping the deployment of genetically engineered crops. Technologies that offer improved containment, targeted expression or simplified regulatory pathways could therefore play an important role in the next generation of agricultural biotechnology.

Cytotrait’s founders believe their platform could represent a step forward in that effort. As Dr Junwei Ji, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Cytotrait, said: “Food security and sustainability are two of our most pressing global challenges, and issues that we must be prepared to face today to ensure we are ready to meet the needs of tomorrow. We developed MOSS with those challenges in mind – a unique crop engineering solution capable of streamlining regulatory pathways and generating crops with new, enhanced, and more carbon-conscious traits. Thank you to our investors, whose support reaffirms our belief in the potential of MOSS to bring about a new frontier in crop technology.”

Investors involved in the funding round also highlighted the significance of the company’s approach. Duncan Johnson, CEO of Northern Gritstone, said: “Cytotrait is a prime example of the world-class innovation from the North of England’s universities and the ambitious founders and teams we see on our venture building program, NG Studios. Northern Gritstone is very pleased to be working with Dr Ji and the team and looks forward to positive results from this first tranche of new development programmes.”

Dr Tim Brears, Executive Chair of Cytotrait, emphasised the wider potential of the technology: “MOSS is truly a breakthrough in the field of crop technology, allowing us to precisely engineer characteristics that can not only enhance yield and resilience, but also help to drive a more sustainable future for modern agriculture. We’re extremely proud of everything our team has already accomplished, and thankful to our investors, whose support will enable us to expand our pipeline and explore the applications of MOSS in some of the world’s major crop types.”

Hassan Mahmudul, Investment Manager at the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund, added: “UKI2S invests in companies developing novel engineering biology solutions to tackle large, global challenges. We are delighted to welcome Cytotrait to our growing agritech portfolio, recognising the strength of its platform technology, which has the potential to unlock high-value trait expression at levels significantly beyond what is achievable through conventional nuclear genome engineering.”

The coming years will determine whether organelle-based engineering can fulfil its promise in real-world agricultural systems. For now, Cytotrait’s seed funding marks an early step in translating a novel approach to plant biotechnology into tools that could help reshape the future of sustainable farming.