Yield10 plans to extract the PHA bioplastic from the Camelina seed for product prototyping, sampling and business development.
Yield10 Bioscience, Inc, an agricultural bioscience company has announced successful field testing of prototype lines of the oilseed Camelina sativa, that have been programed to produce PHA bioplastics directly in seed.
PHA are natural polymers, prevalent in nature and fully biodegradable in the environment. Currently produced by fermentation of engineered microbes, PHA polymers also have applications in water treatment where they act as a zero-waste solution to nitrate pollution and as animal feed ingredients. Yield10 has a long history with and deep knowledge of PHAs and it believes that direct production of PHA in seed as a co-product with oil and protein meal has the potential to enable production of PHA bioplastics on an agricultural scale at costs in line with commodity vegetable oils to drive large-scale adoption in the plastics markets. PHA bioplastics could ultimately be used to manufacture a wide range of fully biodegradable consumer products.
The prototype plants tested in these studies were programed with microbial genes based on a recent patent filed for new technology developed by Yield10 researchers to produce Camelina seed containing high levels of PHA bioplastic suitable for field production. All engineered PHA Camelina lines tested produced PHA in the seed. The levels of PHA produced in seed at the two different locations were consistent and measured up to 6 percent PHA of mature seed weight depending on the plant line tested, demonstrating proof-of-concept for field production of PHA in Camelina sativa using the new technology.
Based on these results, Yield10 has selected two PHA Camelina lines for larger scale field testing in 2021, pending the issuance of permits in the U.S. In addition to generating more data, Yield10 plans to determine the suitability of the lines for initial commercial activities. Each PHA application area has different price points and scale requirements, and will have different PHA content requirements for commercial launch. Based on this, Yield10 believes that PHA content in the range of 5 to 20 percent of mature seed weight in Camelina would address the range of target applications. Yield10 plans to extract the PHA bioplastic from the Camelina seed for product prototyping, sampling and business development.
“Our development of Camelina as a new platform crop to produce proprietary products is aligned with global trends to a low carbon economy. These include innovations in cash relay and cover crops for growers to reduce the environmental impact of commodity agriculture and the production of carbon negative products for food, fuel and plastics,” said Oliver Peoples, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Yield10 Bioscience.
