£3 Million Seed Funding Raised For Crop Engineering Technology
£3 Million Seed Funding Raised For Crop Engineering Technology
https://pulse2.com/cytotrait-3-million-seed-funding-raised-for-crop-engineering-technology/
Publish Date: 2026-03-09 23:56:00
Source Domain: pulse2.com
Cytotrait, a biotechnology spinout from The University of Manchester focused on developing novel traits for food and agriculture, has secured £3 million in seed funding to advance its crop engineering platform and expand research across major crop species.
The investment round was led by Northern Gritstone, with additional backing from the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Future Planet Capital, and the Northern Universities Ventures Fund, managed by Parkwalk in collaboration with Northern Gritstone. The funding will support Cytotrait as it builds on early data from its proprietary Mutant Organelle Selection System (MOSS) technology and launches new development programs aimed at improving crop performance.
Cytotrait’s MOSS platform is designed to address longstanding challenges in crop engineering by enabling rapid homoplasmy and delivering genes or gene edits directly into plant organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria. By ensuring genetic modifications are present across every organelle within plant cells, the technology enables more precise engineering of crop traits while potentially reducing phytotoxicity and simplifying regulatory pathways.
The approach is intended to allow researchers to engineer crop characteristics with localized and high-level expression, while also enabling easier backcrossing, trait stacking, and improved containment. These capabilities could help accelerate the development of crops with enhanced productivity, resilience, and environmental performance.
With the new capital, Cytotrait plans to expand research programs targeting wheat, maize, potato, and canola across European and North American markets. The company aims to explore applications that include increased crop yield and resilience, the introduction of valuable new food traits, and agricultural practices that promote sustainability through improved carbon sequestration.
Since its formation, Cytotrait has worked closely with the…
