Crop diseases caused by pathogens and pests pose a global burden on agriculture, reducing harvest by up to 40%, and ultimately impacting the economy and environment. Currently, pesticides are used to protect crops, however, they negatively impact the environment and pose health risks to humans. Therefore, developing disease-resistant crops remains challenging and demands innovative solutions and research. The endless arms race between plants and pathogens is a perfect example of evolution. Due to the slow growth of plants and the fast proliferation of pathogens, plants evolve much slower than pathogens. Therefore, it’s difficult for us to search for resistant plants from nature, and pathogens can easily overcome plant’s resistance.

To help plants win the arms race, we are employing a Nobel Prize-winning technology, Directed Evolution, which enables millions of years of evolution to be achieved in the lab in one week. We aim to use directed evolution to disrupt the PRR-effector interaction, creating PRRs (Pattern Recognition Receptors) resistant to the attacks of the pathogen’s effectors.