Plastomics
Chloroplast engineering
Field Trial Phase

Engineering the future of crops — from the inside out.

The chloroplast — untouched by 30 years of crop biotech, and the only place the next yield breakthrough can come from.

Why traits matter

Traits are the reason farmers can still afford to farm.

Costs have tripled. Prices haven't moved. Yield has flattened.

Cost to plant an acre
$300
1996
→
$900
2025

Tripled in a generation.

Corn price per bushel
$3.80
1996
→
$4.00
2025

Essentially unchanged.

US corn yield, bu/acre
176.7
2021
173.4
2022
177.3
2023
179.3
2024
182
2025

Five years, +5 bu — flat.

The only lever left

More crop per acre — which means trait technology has to keep getting better, or growers stop producing food.

The limit

Nuclear trait technology has run out of room.

01

Stacking limit

Nuclear transformation limits how many traits can be stacked together cost-effectively — against rising demand for more.

02

Expression ceiling

Nuclear insertion silences foreign DNA. High-value proteins never reach commercially viable levels.

03

Yield loss

An estimated $1.4B a year in lost US corn yield, plus two extra years to market for novel traits.

Meanwhile >90% of US and Brazil corn and soy acres are GMO, in a seed-trait market heading to $38B by 2030.

The mechanism

So we engineer the chloroplast, not the nucleus.

1
nucleus per cell
versus
~100
chloroplasts per cell

High, stable expression

Many genome copies per cell, expressed in green tissue — proteins intractable in the nucleus now express.

No pollen outcrossing

Chloroplasts are maternally inherited, through seed only. Containment by biology, not by stewardship.

Faster breeding

Traits pass down the maternal line — roughly two years and $1–2M out of each trait program.

How it works, in detail→ Additive, not competitive — it reaches what editing the nucleus cannot.
The proof

It already works — in the field, and in corn.

Proof in soybean
4

One trait, four insects controlled

The trait the nucleus couldn't deliver.

This protein failed in the nucleus at one of the world's most renowned R&D labs. It works in our chloroplast platform — at commercial-level mortality, with no off-types and no yield penalty.

Velvet bean caterpillar
Corn earworm
Soybean looper
Fall armyworm

No expression in seed — a regulatory advantage. Field testing began Summer 2026.

Corn breakthrough

Our platform now works in corn.

The world's largest crop — and the one the industry has never been able to reach this way.

01Gene integration demonstrated in corn chloroplasts across multiple tissue types
02Corn chloroplast gene editing achieved and published, 2025
03Canola chloroplast gene delivery proof of concept

Mangu et al., Plant Biotechnology Journal 23(9): 3510–3523 (2025)

See the full pipeline →
The prize, and the path

The biggest yield gains left in agriculture are inside the chloroplast.

<2%

of sunlight captured by crops today

~11%

what is biologically possible — the gap to close

90%

of crop weight comes from photosynthesis

The genes that set yield are only reachable in the chloroplast. We have already published editing one of them in corn.

Market opportunity

Two opportunities on the acres that already exist.

One trait the nucleus can't express
~$3.4B

a year of new seed-company cashflow on today's corn and soy acres

~$345M a year to Plastomics at a 10% royalty. From a single insect trait, at 50% adoption.

Yield: closing the photosynthesis gap
~$2.6B

a year of new grower profit for every 1% of yield gained

~$40M a year to Plastomics per point at a 10% royalty. Efficiency runs under 2% against a theoretical 11%.

Illustrative models on today's acres. Canola, sugarcane, grasses and trees sit on top of both.

Open to collaborate

Bring us the trait, the crop, or the molecule.

We are the experts in chloroplast engineering for agronomic crops — and we will build the platform work around what you need.

Seed companies
Biotech & pharma
Academic institutions
Explore collaboration opportunities