Yield10 is also developing PHA winter Camelina lines and advancing its research programme to increase the level and type of PHA production achievable in its Camelina plant varieties
Yield10 Bioscience, an agricultural bioscience company, announced recent advances in the development of Camelina as a platform for the production of PHA bioplastic directly in the seed. Field work completed during 2021 supports the company’s decision to begin seed scale-up of prototype PHA spring Camelina lines at acre-scale in 2022. Yield10 is also developing PHA winter Camelina lines and advancing its research programme to increase the level and type of PHA production achievable in its Camelina plant varieties.
“Camelina holds great promise as a platform crop for efficient, scalable, low-cost production of PHA bioplastics,” said Kristi Snell, Chief Science Officer, Yield10 Bioscience. “Through our research and development efforts to date, Yield10 expects to contribute significantly towards the global effort to produce biodegradable materials targeted for consumer packaging and foodservice items while also helping to reduce the amount of petroleum-based plastic waste currently polluting the world’s land and oceans. There is real momentum driving the company’s innovative pace of Camelina PHA trait development and its ultimate commercial deployment for year-round harvest using both spring and winter lines.”
Yield10 plans to breed an optimised PHA trait into the elite herbicide and disease-resistant varieties of Camelina currently advancing in its pipeline with the expectation to process PHA Camelina to achieve the integrated economics of simultaneously producing three seed products: PHA bioplastic, feedstock oil and protein animal feed. Seed-based PHA bioplastic would represent a major new market for farmers.
