Researchers at the University of Missouri have successfully adapted an artificial-intelligence-designed gene-editing tool to develop rice plants capable of fighting off bacterial blight, marking what the university describes as the first time the technology has been applied to plants.
Led by Bing Yang, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and an investigator at the Bond Life Sciences Center, the research team published their findings in the journal aBIOTECH. The project builds on more than a decade of study into how the destructive pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae infects crops.
Bacterial blight is a major threat to global agriculture, capable of cutting rice yields by up to 70 percent in severe outbreaks. Because rice serves as a primary dietary staple for over half the world's population, scientists have long sought reliable methods to shield the crop without relying solely on chemicals.
The breakthrough utilizes OpenCRISPR-1, a gene-editing system originally created by California-based biotechnology firm Profluent using machine learning models to design synthetic molecular components. While previously demonstrated in animal cells, Yang's team is among the first to validate an AI-generated editing tool in a crop species.
Despite the laboratory milestone, university officials caution that the modified plants remain experimental. Translating the lab-grown trait into commercial rice varieties and navigating regulatory and breeding pathways is expected to take several years before seeds become available to farmers.
