J.R. Simplot partners with Benson Hill to improve Innate potato crop

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, J.R. Simplot and Benson Hill are to launch a pilot to improve the photosynthetic efficiency of the potato crop

Benson Hill Biosystems, a start-up co-founded by Matt Crisp, Tom Brutnell and Todd Mockler, researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, is focused on photosynthesis as a pathway to improving crop production.

The Benson Hill Biosystems website describes the company's objective and the opportunity as follows:

Despite millions of years of evolution, photosynthesis remains an extremely inefficient process. The maximum theoretical efficiency by which solar energy can be converted into biomass by this process has been calculated between 4.6% and 6.0%, but observed photosynthetic efficiencies peak at only half of the theoretical maximum in the field.

Breeding efforts to improve crop yields have indirectly caused improvements in photosynthesis because of the important links between photosynthesis and crop yield. Breeding programs to date have not focused on photosynthetic efficiency as a target for improvement, however, and are limited by the genetic variation present in the germplasm available to breeders.

The biotech approaches used by Benson Hill allow us to make use of traits that are not available to crop breeders by inserting genes of interest from distantly related species.

Furthermore, by focusing directly on photosynthetic efficiency as a trait of interest, Benson Hill is able to impart traits into crop plants that have not been realized through traditional breeding approaches that have been focused on crop yield and not photosynthetic efficiency per se.

With Boise, Idaho-based J.R. Simplot, Benson Hill will participate in a pilot program that utilizes both companies’ technology to increase potato crop yields.

“We initiated this discussion a few months ago and became aware of each other’s technology platforms in more depth,” Crisp said. The pilot is set to launch in the next 60 days, he said. “It will involve multiple years of testing, and we will be doing field evaluations,” he said.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies will use Benson Hill’s technology with J.R. Simplot’s Innate potato biotechnology, which reduces bruises on the spuds, leading to greater utilization and less waste.