RETHINKING TOBACCO is a project addressing food insecurity by cutting-edge biotechnology.

Due to the growth of world population and problems like crop-eating locust, food crisis will become a serious topic in near future.

Innovation for growing plants and crops was always needed, however there was no effective solution towards this issue.

GRA&GREEN discovered a process using tobacco plant which enables grafting of all types of plants.

This makes it possible to grow crops in environment previously considered unsuitable.

By 2050, the world population will reach almost 10 billion people and demand of foods will increase by about 70% from now.

Also crop-eating locust is becoming a huge problem, which will lead to food crisis.

GRA&GREEN focused on grafting, a traditional method to improve the resilience of a plant.

We discovered a process using tobacco plant which enables grafting of all types of plants.

This makes it possible to grow crops in environment previously considered unsuitable.

By sharpening our future vision of growing many types of plants on desert, we communicated the fact that tobacco plant has the potential to ensure food security in the future.

Grafting is a traditional method to improve the taste and the resilience of a plant by cutting a branch and connecting it with other types of the same variety.

Until now, grafting was limited to closely related species, but we discovered a process using the tobacco plant as an intermediary to enable grafting of all types of plants.

This is a fantastic breakthrough for breeding plants.

By delivering cutting-edge biotechnology tools such as genome editing, we are developing beautiful, disease resistant varieties.

This makes it possible to grow crops in environments previously considered unsuitable, to ensure food security in the future.

Until 2018, we have been testing various combination of grafting using tobacco plant to make sure our technology really works.

We also checked the requirements of the environment for grafting with other species, for example temperature, humidity.

As a result, we made sure that grafting with tobacco plant works for various types of plants in certain condition.

As a startup we are not just researching but collaborating with companies to adopt our technology to real plants and crops.

In 2019, for example, by grafting tomato (which is weak against soilborne pathogen), with leguminosae plant (which has a strong root) we succeeded in making disease resistant tomato.

Our next step will be applying our technology to environment which has the issue of desertification.

GRA&GREEN’s idea started from a research in the bio-tech at Nagoya University in Japan.

Our major was breeding plants however it takes long term to improve the taste and the resilience of a plant by genome editing,

During our research, we focused on the neutral feature of the tobacco plant and came up with the idea of using it as an intermediary for grafting.

By moving forward the research, we found out that grafting tobacco plant could be used as an injection for a plant.

This means that cutting-edge biotechnology could be delivered into the plant without genetically modifying.

This technology could be applied to plants and crops which we eat every day.

Food industry has demands for improving their way of breeding.

Therefore we are trying to apply our technology by collaborating with them.

By tobacco plant, GRA&GREEN succeeded in grafting of all types of plants, which is a great breakthrough for breeding plants.

This is definitely a big step for ensuring food security in the future.

By sharpening our future vision of growing many types of plants on desert, we communicated the fact that tobacco plant has the potential to ensure food security in the future.

In this way we are also looking for collaborator of our project, especially related to agriculture.

For example we got real offers from countries in the Middle East which has the issue of desertification.

We are planning to start PoC of our biotechnology to grow plants on their land.

Our next step will be testing breeding plants on area that has issues in breeding.