This month's speaker is Dr. Ratan Chopra, Vice President of Research at CoverCress. For several decades now, model plants have been studied and gene function has been characterized using T-DNA mutants and/or over-expression strategies. These studies have been critical to delineate biosynthesis pathways and gene functions but limit our understanding of phenotypes that come from partial changes in gene expression. It is often desirable to change the expression of a gene without losing gene or enzyme activity to maintain plant fitness in field conditions, but discovery of such alleles takes several years and and can be expensive. They will be presenting some CRISPR-Cas9 mediated gene editing examples of novel phenotypes and how these phenotypes provide solutions for agronomic challenges in pennycress.

AgriTech Thursdays is a monthly, after-work event focused on agricultural technologies research and collaboration in the St Louis region. At each event, one company or researcher gives a short, 15 minute talk on an existing or solved research problem of their choosing and how it fits into the wider agricultural technologies landscape.